Captain Rogers And The Norseman's Cube
by RobotRollCall
Summary: It's 1938 and Steve Rogers and his best friend, Bucky Barnes, are about to start their first year at Hogwarts. There are spells to learn and friends to make, but war is brewing on the horizon, and a shadow more dangerous than Hitler or Grindelwald is awakening...Hydra. A magical re-telling of Captain America: The First Avenger.
1. The First Year

_A/N: Alright, here we go! Steve and Bucky go to Hogwarts! Just a couple of points to clarify-we're not crossing over with any Harry Potter characters here, just borrowing their universe, and this isn't going to line up with any of the events from the Fantastic Beast movies, because I haven't seen them. This story is also complete, so no long waits between updates while I try to figure out what I'm doing._

_I want to give a HUGE shoutout to my fantastic beta reader, NinjaGidget, who is amazing and deserves all the rooibos tea in the world. This beast would never have been tamed without her. (Little plug for her-if you like SPN, she's got some pretty cool stuff going on over on her page.) Also, thank you to usa123, who's always been very encouraging. You guys rock!_

_Let's get started and set the stage with a little bit of fluff before the war starts. _

* * *

"Merlin's beard, Steve, what did you put in this thing?" Bucky demanded, reaching out just in time to stop his tiny friend from tipping over backward under the weight of his backpack.

"I wanted to bring some books, and they didn't fit in my trunk," Steve complained.

"They have a library at Hogwarts, you know," Bucky told him, pulling the pack off his back as Steve yelped in protest and looping the straps around the handle of his own trunk.

"Yeah, but…" Steve kicked at the floor. "What if it's all just magic stuff? What if they don't have regular books and things?"

"Fair enough, but every book you own might be a bit much. Is this everything Zane Gray has ever written?"

Steve stuck out his tongue, then flopped down on top of his trunk. "Hey, Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"Your family went to Hogwarts, right?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, sitting down next to him. Steve knew that. He figured Steve was worrying again if he should really be going. He'd been doing that ever since he got his letter. "Your pop did too."

"Yeah, but, I mean, I never got to _talk_ to him about it. Cause, you know, he…" Steve trailed off. His dad had died before Steve was born. His ma knew about magic, but never had any of her own. Steve had always wondered, especially as his eleventh birthday got closer, if he'd make it into Hogwarts. His magic had shown up later than normal and had never been particularly impressive—not that anyone's was when they were kids, but Steve's less so than most people. But it had been enough to get him in.

"Are you worried about the Sorting again?" Bucky asked.

"Bucky, what if I have to do magic up in front of everybody?!" Steve moaned. "What if I get it wrong and everyone laughs and the teachers say they made a mistake and I have to go home?"

"That won't happen," Bucky assured him. He didn't know how the Sorting worked, actually, but his parents had assured him there was no test involved. He was more concerned about the houses. What if Steve got Sorted into a different house? How was Bucky supposed to look after him then? And what would Bucky do without his best friend?

A whistle pierced the air, jarring him out of his thoughts as a shiny red engine pulled into the secret, magical platform of Grand Central Station where they were waiting. "It's time," Bucky said. "Hey, Ma!" he called, waving to where his parents stood talking to an old classmate. "It's here!"

* * *

Standing outside of the Great Hall, it seemed like the hours on the train and the boat ride across the lake had taken no time at all. The First-Years huddled at the doors, falling silent instantly as a man with a scroll appeared. He was old and stern-looking, and when he spoke, his voice barked loudly, as if it was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. "First-Years!" he roared in an unexpectedly American accent. "I am Professor Phillips. I am the Deputy Headmaster here at Hogwarts, and it is my job to set you on the path to be the best witches and wizards you can be. You are all here because you represent the next generation of magic. As you know, at the age of eleven…" His breath caught momentarily as his eyes landed on Steve, and he squinted at him suspiciously before continuing. "At the age of eleven, every witch and wizard is considered for application, and you, ladies and gentlemen, are the ones that made it. Congratulations." Steve didn't think he sounded particularly enthused in his felicitations.

"In a moment those doors will open," Phillips continued. "You will keep quiet and proceed through to the front of the Great Hall in an orderly line, where you will be Sorted into one of the four houses that you will be a part of for the next seven years. When you are Sorted, you will proceed directly to your house table, is that understood?" The children nodded. "I said is that understood?!" Phillips barked, louder this time.

"Yes, Sir!" they chorused.

"Move out," he said, and the doors swung open.

Making sure to keep close to Bucky, Steve hurried along with the crowd of children to the front of the room. Long tables filled with students lined each side. They stopped at the front. Before them was a stool with an old hat on it. Did they have to do something with the hat?

Phillips stepped to the front of the group of students and unrolled the scroll he had tucked under his arm. "Barnes, James!" he bellowed.

Looking confident to everyone but Steve, who could tell he was nervous, Bucky stepped forward. Phillips lifted the hat and gestured for Bucky to sit. When he did, Phillips placed the hat over his dark hair. For a moment, nothing appeared to happen. Was the hat moving? Steve stood on his tiptoes to try to see. He jumped as the hat suddenly shouted, "Hufflepuff!"

The table closest to their left erupted in cheers, yellow scarves waving in the air, and Bucky slipped off the stool and walked to the Hufflepuff table where older students moved over to give him a seat. He smiled at Steve and waved, and Steve sort of smiled back. It hadn't occurred to him that he might end up in a different house than Bucky. What would he do if that happened?

"Carter, Margaret!" Phillips called, and Steve momentarily forgot his fear as the prettiest girl he'd ever seen walked up to the front. She caught his eye and gave him a friendly smile. Well, Steve thought as she walked toward a sea of wildly waving red scarves, maybe Gryffindor wouldn't be _that_ bad.

The fear returned with a vengeance, however, as the list of names grew shorter and shorter. Some people were Sorted the instant the hat touched their head. Some, like Bucky, took a little longer.

"Dernier, Jacques!" Another one for Hufflepuff.

Steve kept trying to focus on all the names, he really did. These people were going to be his classmates, after all.

"Dugan, Timothy!" A boy who looked way too big to be eleven joined the Gryffindor table.

But what if he ended up with a bunch of strangers?

"Falsworth, James Montgomery!" The pale, thin boy was the first new Slytherin. (The first one Steve caught, anyway. He kept getting distracted and missing names.)

He couldn't actually remember a time when he hadn't known Bucky.

"Jones, Gabriel!" The new Ravenclaw was an athletic-looking black boy that Steve remembered seeing at the station in New York.

He'd heard the houses did almost everything together. What if he only got to see his best friend in a couple of classes?

"Morita, James!" An Asian boy who wasn't too much taller than Steve hopped up onto the stool, and, after a bit of musing from the hat, was directed to the Ravenclaw table.

Wait, they were already on the M's?! He'd better start paying attention. He didn't embarrass easily anymore, but missing them calling out his name would sure do it. But what if he didn't have any classes with Bucky at _all_? What if he only ever got to see him on the train?

"Rogers, Steven!"

Steve jumped and ran up to the front. He scrabbled up on the stool, and he heard laughter as the hat slipped down over his eyes, but it stopped abruptly. It was quiet inside the hat. "Hmm. Let's see," a voice mused. Was the hat talking to him? "There's a lot to consider with you," the hat said.

"There is?" Steve asked.

"Oh, yes," the hat replied. "I sense great things for you, boy. Great things. But which house would best take you there?"

"Great things?" Steve repeated. He wondered if the hat thought he was someone else. His magic had never been much to talk about.

"Yes. Now hush," the hat admonished. "I'm thinking."

"Sorry."

"Slytherin would help you with that desire to prove yourself," the hat mused. "And you certainly have a lot of that, don't you?" It chuckled in his ear. "I can see why. And of course," it continued. "Gryffindor would nurture that bold spirit of yours. Not that it needs much work. Like a lion, you are. A very small lion, but a lion nonetheless," it added.

"Is your job to Sort me or to make fun of me?" Steve snapped.

The hat chuckled again. "I can do both at the same time. You've got quite a brain in that little head of yours, too. Ravenclaw could be just what you need to sharpen it into a formidable weapon." The voice quieted, obviously thinking.

Steve's heart sank a little bit. It sounded like it had decided on his options, and the house Bucky was in wasn't one of them. Was he going to make it without Bucky? A new thought occurred to him…They'd done everything together since the day they met. Would Bucky be okay without _him_? He was tougher than Steve, of course he'd be fine…wouldn't he?

"Something troubling you, Master Rogers?" the hat asked.

"Are those…" He stopped and swallowed. "Are those three my only choices?"

"They're not your choices, they're mine," the hat said. "It's not your job to Sort yourself."

"Sorry," he said softly. His stomach knotted. Guess that was it. He promised himself he wouldn't cry about it. No. He wouldn't. The hat thought he wanted to prove himself, so he would. He would show them he was tough enough to get by on his own.

"I wasn't finished, you know," the hat told him. "When you so presumptuously assumed you got to choose your house. As I was saying, brains, ambition and boldness, you certainly have, but loyalty, well, that's just oozing out of every pore, isn't it? Between that and the desire to do right by everyone that I can just feel rolling off you in waves, I would be remiss not to put you in HUFFLEPUFF!"

The hat yelled the last word and Steve jumped at the abrupt change in volume as the hat was pulled off his head and his ears were assaulted by a cheering hall full of students. No one was cheering louder than the table with the yellow scarves, and he rushed over. Bucky was on his feet, beaming and whooping.

"Alright, Steve!" he yelled, looping an arm around his neck and dragging him down to the bench. The girl next to him moved over to make room, and the boy across the table grinned at him in welcome. He wasn't exactly used to being welcomed by strangers. This was kind of nice. And it was going to be great, because Bucky was there. Bucky, who, based on the way his arm was lingering around Steve's neck, had been just as worried about the Sorting as he had.

"I can't breathe, Buck," Steve told him.

"Oops. Sorry," Bucky said, quickly letting go. Steve grinned, and Bucky grinned right back. "We did it, Stevie."

* * *

"Hey, Bucky?" Steve asked.

"What'd you say?" Bucky asked, pausing in his unpacking. Steve, for whatever reason, was under his bed, and wasn't speaking very clearly.

"I said 'Hey, Bucky'," Steve answered, crawling out and clutching the pair of socks he must have dropped.

"Oh. What?"

"Did the hat talk to you?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Bucky replied, picking up another shirt to hang up. "Why?"

"I just wondered what it said. It talked to me for a while."

"I noticed," Bucky said. "It was almost a minute before it said anything."

"It felt like longer," Steve said, dropping his socks again. "What'd it tell you?"

"It was trying to figure out what house to put me in." Bucky paused in his unfolding, looking thoughtful. "It almost put me in Gryffindor, but then it said one day I would need to be brave, but not as much as I would need to be able to keep going without giving up. And it said loyalty was gonna save my life. What do you think that means?"

"I don't know," Steve said thoughtfully, putting the socks in the middle of his bed. "Can it see the future?"

"It kinda sounds like it, doesn't it?" Bucky said. It kind of freaked him out, actually. "Do you…do you think it means something bad is gonna happen?"

"Maybe it meant something bad would've happened if you'd gone somewhere else, so it put you in Hufflepuff so it wouldn't."

"Maybe that's it. I hope that's it," Bucky said. He hadn't thought of that, and he didn't know if it was true, but he felt better. His pop had always said Divination was iffy and hard to interpret anyway. And it _was_ just a hat. "What'd it say to you?"

Steve shrugged. "It was talking about what in each house would be good for me. And I think it was making fun of me for being little."

"Stupid hat," Bucky growled.

Steve grinned. "I think it was just thinking out loud. I'm guessing it doesn't get to talk much the rest of the year. But it decided on Hufflepuff."

"Well, I'm glad," Bucky said.

"Me too," Steve agreed.

Just then, a scruffy little boy carrying a box burst through the door into the room. "Succès!" he declared. "J'ai trouvè la cuisine!" he added proudly.

Bucky recognized him from earlier. Each dorm room had five students in it—there were four rooms of First-Year boys in Hufflepuff this year and three of the girls—and he was their fifth roommate, Jacques. They hadn't actually seen him since they left the Great Hall after dinner, where they had discovered that he did not speak English.

"Les elfes de maison sont très accommodants," Jacques continued happily.

Bucky looked at Steve, then across the room at Morris and David, their other two roommates. (They were both English. Bucky and Steve were part of a small group of American students that came to Hogwarts every year, along with that big Gryffindor kid, Dugan, and Jones and Morita who'd gone to Ravenclaw. Jacques, as far as anyone knew, was the only French student.) They all shrugged. "What?" They'd also discovered at dinner—their prefect spoke a little French—that Jacques wore a little charm clipped behind his ear that translated everything he heard for him. It didn't work the other way, though.

"J'ai de la nourriture," he said patiently.

Bucky and Steve looked at each other and then back at him, and he rolled his eyes. "La nourriture," he said again, pulling the lid off the tin he was carrying. It was filled to the brim with leftovers from dinner.

Bucky laughed. "You found the kitchen."

Jacques beamed. "Oui!" He held out the box, and even though they'd just eaten, the boys gladly accepted the offered treats.

A knock on the door had them stuffing the food in their mouths and swallowing quickly as the prefect came in. "Alright, guys, it's…Where's the French kid?" the prefect asked, looking around the room.

The other four boys looked around, as puzzled as he was.

"Je suis ici!" Jacques exclaimed, rolling out from under his bed, minus the tin of stolen food. "Je cherchais quelque chose."

"Uh huh," the prefect responded. It was the other prefect who knew French. "Anyway, it's lights out in a minute. Breakfast's at seven in the Great Hall."

He shut the door and the boys climbed into their beds. A moment later, the torches on the wall flickered and went out.

"Whoa," Bucky heard Steve whisper.

* * *

It was amazing how fast time flew, and it was hard to believe a month had gone by already. Steve knew his way around the castle like he'd lived there all his life. Well, some of the castle. He would take Bucky and go exploring when they should have been doing homework. His weekly letters to his mother were filled with descriptions of all the wonderful things they found and everything he learned. His ma had learned about magic when she married his dad, but Steve didn't know how much he'd told her about Hogwarts, so he made sure to tell her as much as he could.

His magic had not improved significantly, but he didn't seem to be in any danger of getting kicked out. He knew all the words for every charm and hex they'd learned in class and then some, but he had just as much chance of getting the desired result with his wand as he did of setting something on fire or turning Jacques into a koala. Jacques, for his part, hadn't seemed to mind all that much. Professor Phillips, on the other hand, had not found it amusing at all. Either time.

The subjects without wands, however, were where Steve found himself starting to succeed. Herbology, History of Magic, Astronomy…His favorite was Potions, and Professor Erskine, the Potions Master, was patient and easy to talk to. Phillips still scared him a little bit. If Steve messed up in Defense Against The Dark Arts, Phillips would bark corrections, and Steve would jump and get nervous and usually make whatever he was doing worse. Mistakes in Potions were simply teachable moments.

"Ah, yes, an easy mistake to make," Erskine would say conversationally, like it could happen to anybody. "The salt sand, it slips through the fingers so quickly, doesn't it? What do you think would be the best way to correct the consistency?"

"Um," Steve considered. His potion had turned nearly to water when he added too much of the sand. "Wormwood was what we put in earlier to thicken it, so more of that?"

Erskine nodded encouragingly, but seemed to be waiting for more.

"But I should also put in more…" Steve searched his brain. "Lavender?"

"Why?"

"The lavender…the lavender does something. Oh! It reduces the potency of the wormwood so that it doesn't overpower the rest of the ingredients!"

"Very good, Steven," Erskine said with a smile. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "While I am normally an advocate of experimentation as a teaching tool, in the interest of making sure you get to Charms on time, I will tell you that you should add three drops of wormwood and four of lavender." He smiled and moved on to check on Jacques, whose cauldron contents had mutated into a violent shade of green, instead of the creamy yellow it should have been.

Later that afternoon, Steve was sitting on the bleachers of the Quidditch field with a sketchbook on his lap. He may not have been excelling at much just yet, but Bucky sure was. Bucky was good at everything. Steve didn't mind though—it had always been like that.

Bucky had made the junior Quidditch team, and when the weather was nice, Steve liked to sit outside and watch them fly around. His first attempt to fly a broom had ended with a trip to the infirmary and two broken bones. He'd made sure to tell his ma all about it—the bones had been healed by the end of the afternoon.

"Hello, Steve."

He looked up, surprised. "Oh, h—hi, Peggy." He wasn't nervous talking to her anymore—he just hadn't been expecting her here. That was all. Gryffindors took Potions and Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, so he saw her a lot, and they got along pretty well. She was nicer to him than a lot of other people were—she never made fun of how little he was, or how bad he was at magic. She was easy to talk to too, and Steve was happy that they'd become friends so quickly—he hadn't had a lot of friends besides Bucky before he came here.

She smiled and sat down next to him. "I didn't know you could draw. Can I see it?" she asked.

"Oh, uh, sure," Steve said, holding out his sketchbook. "It's not finished yet," he added as she studied the page.

"This is quite good," she told him.

"Thanks." He felt the tips of his ears reddening.

She studied the drawing of the Quidditch field a moment longer, then handed it back. "Do you wish you were out there with them?" she asked, nodding at the figures swooping around.

Steve smiled. "Not really. I don't have very good luck on brooms." He watched her watch the players. "Do you?" he wondered.

She looked and down and smiled, cheeks going a little red. "Maybe."

"Why didn't you try out?" he asked. "I bet you'd be great."

She shook her head, her soft curls bouncing around her ears. "No girls allowed on the Quidditch team."

"Really?" Steve asked, suddenly angry. "That's stupid. Did they tell you that?" he asked, pointing at the boys on the field.

"No. I mean, it's not _their_ rule. It's just…_a_ rule. I doubt it's even occurred to any of them that there aren't any girls out there."

She was probably right. Steve hadn't noticed until she'd pointed it out. "It's still stupid."

She smiled. "Well, maybe one day it'll be allowed. I'm going to have to let up on it for a bit, though. I think Professor Phillips is ready to give me detention if I ask again."

Steve laughed. Practice started out on the field, and they sat together and watched. Steve still didn't fully understand the game, so Peggy explained it to him as it went along. It was a shame they wouldn't let her be on the team. She knew what she was talking about.

When practice finished, most of the boys started drifting away. "Hey, Steve!" Bucky called, swooping over on his broom. "We're gonna toss the ball around some, you wanna play? Jim figured out something he thinks will help you not fall off your broom. Hi, Peggy."

"Hello."

"Um, sure, I guess," Steve said. If he could manage to stay on the broom, it might be kind of fun. He shot a glance sideways to where Peggy was picking up her things. "Can Peggy play too?"

"Sure, if she wants to," Bucky said with a shrug. He turned to Peggy. "You wanna Keep?"

She grinned. "I'm really more of a Beater."

Bucky looked back at the field. "Hey, Monty! Toss me your bat! Peggy's going to Beat. You need practice Chasing anyway."

On the field, they divided up for a quick game of five-a-side. On the ground, Steve climbed onto a broom and Bucky watched carefully as Jim Morita muttered things at the broom and tapped it with his wand. Jim was a Ravenclaw—Hufflepuff had most of their classes with them. Steve didn't know him that well yet, but he was smart, and Bucky trusted him, so it would probably be okay.

"You sure this is gonna work?" Bucky asked when Jim was done.

"He won't fall off," Jim said confidently. "Go on, Rogers, give it a try."

Carefully, Steve pushed off the ground. He hovered a little, and when he felt better about not falling, he went a little higher. "Feels okay," he said.

Bucky grinned. "Alright, let's go!"

Steve was Keeping for his team—he didn't know all the rules, but stopping the ball was pretty straightforward, and it gave him a chance to watch the game. Bucky was a Chaser, and he was pretty good. Steve wouldn't be surprised if he got pulled up to the regular team next year. Dugan was a Beater, though he really didn't need the bat. He just flew at people and they got out of his way. Jacques was Seeker—he was really fast and just as nimble in the air as he was on the ground. And Peggy…Steve realized his mouth was hanging open as he watched her. The Bludgers she hit never missed their targets, and more than once knocked them off their brooms. She was good at dodging hits too, and barely seemed to notice when she took them.

He stopped watching Peggy and started watching the Quaffle when it came his direction. He blocked two shots without too much trouble. The third shot was harder to block, and he felt himself rolling off his broom as the ball flew away. The panic he felt was quickly replaced by confusion when he didn't fall. He was completely upside down now, still sitting on the broom. Apparently, Jim's method of keeping him from falling was to attach him to the broom.

At the end of the game, everyone was in a hurry to put the gear away and get to dinner. "Jim!" Steve called. "Wait, Jim!" He was on the ground but he still couldn't get off the broom.

"Nice blocking, Steve!" Bucky said, landing next to him. "Whatcha standing around for? Let's go eat."

"I can't get off the broom."

"What?"

"That's how Jim kept me from falling. I can't get off."

Bucky tried not to laugh, and he almost made it.

"Shut up," Steve complained.

"Don't worry, I'll get him," Bucky said, racing to the storage shed and still grinning. He returned a moment later with a sheepish-looking Jim.

"Sorry," Jim said. "But, hey, at least it worked, right?" He muttered something and tapped the broom again and Steve was able to get off.

"Yeah, I guess." He smiled. It _had_ worked. And he did have fun. "Thanks, Jim."

Jim smiled and ran off after the rest of the group. Bucky waited with Steve while he put his broom away and grabbed his stuff. "That was fun," Steve told him. "Are you sure the other guys don't mind letting me play with you?"

Bucky snorted. "If they did, I'd thump 'em. Besides, you Keep pretty good."

Steve smiled. "I _am_ good at getting hit with things."

Bucky laughed. "Seriously, though, you're not bad." He threw an arm over his shoulder.

Steve smiled. Bucky was trying to tell him the other guys weren't letting him play out of pity, and Steve appreciated that. It was nice to feel like he could be a part of something.

"So," Bucky said. "What were you and Peggy talking about?" he asked, a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Just Quidditch and stuff," Steve said.

"Sure," Bucky smirked.

"Shut up," Steve said again, reddening. Although, now that he was thinking about it…"Hey, Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"Peggy's pretty good, right?"

"I'll say," Bucky agreed. He reached up to touch the purpling left side of his face. "She's got a hell of an arm on her. I wonder why she didn't try out. She'd have made Beater for sure."

"She wasn't allowed to," Steve told him.

"What?"

"That's what we were talking about. Girls aren't allowed to play Quidditch."

"That's ridiculous," Bucky said.

"It's true," Steve argued.

"I'm not saying it's not. I'm saying it's ridiculous that it _is_ true."

"You think…" Steve wondered. "I mean, I know the Gryffindor junior team already _has_ Beaters, but you think maybe they'd let her on?"

Bucky was quiet and Steve looked up at him. He knew that look. "You know," he mused. "I'll bet Dugan would be up for it. He saw her play today. She could go to all the practices, and then once they have a game and she's awesome, they've got to let her stay, right?"

"Either that or Phillips gives us all detention," Steve said, smiling to let Bucky know he still thought it was a great idea.

* * *

"So," Gabe asked, sidling up to Steve and Bucky on their way to lunch. "What do you think?" The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had just finished Defense Against The Dark Arts, and the long, deep, stitched-together-but-still-occasionally-leaking-blood gash across Professor Phillips' face was all anyone could talk about. Or, rather, all anyone could talk about _after_ class. No one dared to whisper or pass notes in Phillip's class, and since he didn't mention the injury, no one else did either. Everyone spent the lesson trying very hard not to stare at it.

"I heard he got in a fight with a dark wizard," Bucky said, darting his head around to make sure Phillips wasn't in earshot.

"Where'd you hear that?" Steve asked skeptically. It seemed unlikely that there were dark wizards to fight on school grounds.

"Dugan," Bucky said. "You know how Phillips is their Head of House, right, and Dugan said he was gone all weekend. He said the prefects told them sometimes he goes off and does stuff like that."

"So he really _is_ an Auror?" Gabe said. "Awesome." It was a popular rumor around the school.

"Would they really send him off to catch dark wizards during school?" Steve wondered.

"If they're bad enough," Bucky said. "Dugan said he's kind of retired, but they still call him up when there's really bad ones."

Steve inclined his head in agreement. "It _must_ have been a nasty one for his face to look like that still."

Bucky nodded, but Gabe asked, "What do you mean?"

"Cause they couldn't fix it with magic," Steve explained. Like Steve, Gabe hadn't grown up in a magical household, but Steve was already overly familiar with magical healing. Between bullies and accidents and being sick, he spent a lot of time in the infirmary. "Magic can heal regular wounds and stuff just fine, but magical injuries and bad curses and things like that are harder to fix."

"Whoa," Gabe breathed. He looked thoughtful. "Do you think…" He looked around. "Have you guys heard about Hydra?"

Steve and Bucky shook their heads.

"They're a group of dark wizards, part of Grindelwald's followers," he said. "They're real mysterious, so no one knows much about them. I wonder if that's who he was fighting?"

"Wait, if no one knows much about them, how do _you_ know about them?" Bucky asked.

"Jacques told me." Gabe spoke French fluently, and even though they were in different houses, he was rarely seen anymore without the French boy. He would translate for Jacques to students and teachers alike, and they would tell each other jokes in French all the time and refuse to explain them.

"Okay, Jacques knows some weird stuff, but why would he know about secret evil wizards?"

"I don't know. Maybe he heard it in the teacher's lounge—"

"What was he doing there?" Bucky interrupted. Jacques had a tendency for being places he shouldn't without getting caught, but the teacher's lounge was a bold move.

Gabe shrugged. "Snooping, probably. I mean, he's good at it and he's never gotten caught. He doesn't even make himself invisible or anything. He's just sneaky."

"That is true," Steve agreed.

"Anyway," Gabe continued. "I don't know how he knows about 'em, but he _did_ hear Phillips talking to Erskine about how one of them had turned up in Chicago, and they think he stole something, but no one knows what yet or what it was for. But it was super-high security, and they don't know how he got in. Some Aurors found him on his way out but he got away. Phillips just sounded pissed, but Erskine was worried."

"You think Erskine's an Auror too?" Bucky asked.

"He's super-smart," Steve pointed out. "He invents all kinds of spells and potions. He could be."

Bucky grinned. "Awesome."

* * *

Bucky was on his way back from Quidditch practice, laughing with Dugan. Peggy never walked in with them—they didn't want it to look like they were up to anything until everyone saw her at the game. He was loving the Quidditch team—he'd never played before coming here, but they used to listen to games on the radio at home, and he'd always been fairly athletic. It was a lot of fun, even if he kept getting smacked in the face by Peggy's Bludgers. At least his team's first game was against Ravenclaw. Gabe, he could dodge.

Dugan waved and broke off for Gryffindor Tower. Bucky decided to swing by the common room to drop off his stuff before dinner. A muffled thump in an empty room caught his attention, and he swerved to check it out, more out of habit than anything else. He'd gotten used to checking out of the way places for Steve back home, just to make sure no one was beating him up.

He nudged the door open and his eyes widened in surprise before immediately narrowing in anger, because there was Steve, getting beat up. "Hey!" Bucky yelled. The two boys towering over Steve—Slytherin Fifth-Years—turned to look at Bucky before waving dismissively. (Lots of the Slytherin kids went after Steve. Some of the big Gryffindors too. He was an inviting target.)

"Keep walking, Firstie," one of them said. "This isn't your problem."

Instead of giving them time to point their wands at him—they _did_ have four years on him and probably knew some pretty good hexes—Bucky just roared and leapt forward, and the one who'd spoken was on the ground before he knew what had hit him. "_Expelliarmus_!" Bucky yelled, and both of their wands shot away. He punched the one still standing and heard a satisfying crack as his fist met his nose. That one howled, scooped up his wand and ran.

The one on the floor moved just enough to avoid a broken nose of his own as Bucky's fist came down on his jaw. He started to sit up and found Bucky's wand leveled at his face. "Leave him alone," Bucky ordered, and the kid glared, but nodded and left.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, turning to his friend once he was sure the other kid was gone. Steve was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest. Usually at this point Steve would be trying to act like he wasn't hurt and insisting he'd had the other guy on the ropes. "Steve, you okay?"

Bucky knelt down in front of him and Steve looked up. He had a black eye and a split lip—nothing Bucky hadn't seen before, but it always turned his stomach to see the little guy bleeding. "Stevie, what's wrong?" he asked, concern ratcheting up. Steve looked scared.

Steve blinked sad eyes at him and opened his mouth, but no words came out. At first Bucky thought he was just shaken up, but no sound came out at all, and then Steve moved up a hand and patted at his throat. Bucky swallowed down a wave of nausea. "Steve…can you talk?"

Steve's eyes watered and he shook his head minutely, and a weight dropped into Bucky's stomach. Times like this seriously had him considering packing up and moving back to New York—at least the bullies back home didn't have magic. He'd never seen Steve look this scared before, no matter how hard they'd hit him.

He growled and turned towards the door, ready to run after the boys with every curse he knew, but stopped when he felt a hand on his sleeve. Steve was looking at him sadly, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. "Don't worry, Stevie," Bucky said, looping an arm around him. Revenge could wait. "I'm not going anywhere. We'll fix this. I promise. Did they do anything else? Are you hurt?"

Steve looked away, and after a second, gingerly unfolded his legs and lifted his shirt up, revealing a suspiciously foot-shaped bruise covering most of his ribcage. Anger flared up in Bucky's chest and exploded and the door at the other end of the room slammed shut. Steve jumped and Bucky closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hadn't had an uncontrolled burst of magic like that since before he'd come to school. "I'm sorry, Steve," he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I just…"

Steve met his eye with a tiny smile—he'd seen his share of over-protective Bucky over the years. He got it.

"I'm gonna kill 'em," Bucky said. "Slowly. But first we're gonna fix this. Here, hold your shirt up again." Steve looked confused but complied. Bucky pointed his wand at the bruise and said a quick incantation, hoping he was pronouncing it right. Steve shivered and the bruise lightened and vanished. He prodded the spot where it had been, then looked up at Bucky in amazement.

"Ma taught me that one while we were home for Christmas," he said, grinning. They didn't start learning healing spells until Third Year, but this one was pretty basic, and he'd figured he'd need it with all the trouble Steve got into. He was hesitant to try it on his face, though, and figured he'd let the nurse handle that one.

Steve smiled gratefully and got to his feet, walking a few steps over to where his wand had rolled under a desk. Bucky put his arm over his shoulder again and steered him to the door. "We'll go to the infirmary and they'll fix your voice. Okay? It's gonna be fine." He really hoped it would be fine.

The infirmary, for reasons Bucky had never been entirely clear on, was nine floors up. They made it up two without running into anybody—just about everyone was in the Great Hall having dinner. "Good evening, boys," Professor Erskine said from behind them, making them jump. "I'm sorry," he said, his back to them as he locked the door to his office. "I didn't mean to startle you. Something have you a little on edge this evening?"

"Um, no, sir, it's just—" Bucky started, unsure of what to say.

"My goodness, Steven, what happened to your eye?" he interrupted as he turned back to look at them.

"Big Slytherin kid hit him," Bucky said angrily, forgetting the 'sir'. Erskine didn't seem to mind.

"Are you alright?" Erskine asked, leaning down to try to catch Steve's eye. Steve looked down and nodded quickly. Bucky could see him starting to tear up again, whether from embarrassment or lingering fear, it was hard to say.

"He, ah, he can't talk, sir," Bucky said softly. "I don't know what they did. We were on our way to the infirmary."

Erskine's eyes widened in surprise before softening sympathetically. "Oh, Steven, I'm sorry." He put a hand on his arm. "Would you like to come inside?" He gestured at the office he had just locked. "I can fix that up for you if you'd like."

Steve looked up at Erskine, then over at Bucky, as if confirming what he'd just heard. He nodded, blinking away the tears in the corners of his eyes.

Erskine nodded and smiled and went to unlock the door again. He beckoned them in, nodding at Bucky, who hesitated. Nurse Rains sometimes got tetchy when Bucky hovered while she was taking care of Steve. "You can come too, James," Erskine said warmly. "I think Steven could use the company." His tone was sincere and friendly, not at all mocking of Steve's fear. Bucky nodded and squeezed Steve's shoulder and walked inside with him.

Erskine was the Head of Ravenclaw, so Bucky had never had a reason to be in his office before. It was surprisingly cozy. He ushered the boys to a worn, comfortable-looking couch, then started rummaging in a small chest on the desk. He pulled out a flat, clear jewel.

"This," he said, holding out the stone as he walked over. "Is a divining stone. Healers use it when they don't know what sort of curses they're dealing with." He sounded like he was back in class.

"Were you a Healer, sir?" Bucky asked. He'd never really given much thought to where their teachers learned what they knew.

"Yes," Erskine said. "Back in Germany. I worked as a Healer and medical researcher. So I am qualified to tend to Steven."

"That's, I mean, that's not what I meant, Sir, I…"

Steve couldn't make any noise, but Bucky could tell he was laughing. The glint in Erskine's eye told him he'd only been teasing.

"Steven is lucky to have a friend like you, James," Erskine told him seriously. Both boys blushed, but Steve bumped him with his elbow as if to say he agreed. "Now," Erskine continued. "If you'll tilt your head up for me, Steven—yes, just like that—I'm just going to hold it here." He held the stone to Steve's throat and tapped it with his wand. "_Quod tu es_?"

The stone glowed and flashed through several colors in rapid succession before settling on a soft red glow that pulsed slowly. "Ah!" Erskine said, pulling the stone away. "This one is easy to fix, although the potion will take me a bit of time to prepare. Since it seems we are missing dinner, would you boys like something to eat?"

"Um," Bucky looked at Steve. "Sure. I can go…" He started sliding off the couch.

"No need to go all the way to the dining room," Erskine said. He flicked his wand at the coffee table and a plate of sandwiches appeared, along with a jug of milk. "You could go to the cupboard and get some glasses, though," he added, nodding at a wooden cabinet behind his desk.

"Yessir. Thank you, sir," Bucky said. Erskine nodded, already busy at a long table with the potion ingredients.

Bucky watched Steve while they ate, but he didn't look like he was having trouble with the food. The curse didn't seem to have damaged his throat, just…taken his voice away. He was going to have to check with Morita. He knew where to find the good stuff, and he bet Jim could find him a really good curse. Something that would take a while to get rid of.

He picked up another sandwich and looked over at Erskine's back. Potions had never been his favorite class, but Erskine was a good teacher and he'd always seemed nice. Tonight, Bucky reevaluated his opinion. He could have just sent them up to the infirmary and gone on with his evening, but he'd taken the time to make sure Steve would be okay, saving him the potential embarrassment of running into other people somewhere on the seven floors between here and the infirmary. He'd realized Bucky's need to protect his friend and Steve's need for reassurance, all without making either of them feel bad about it, and made sure this misadventure wasn't making them go hungry. Erskine wasn't just nice. He was a really good guy. Bucky could see why Steve liked him so much.

Erskine finished before they did. "Here we are," he said, holding up a vial of grayish-green liquid. He chuckled when Steve's nose wrinkled involuntarily. "It doesn't look like much, I'll admit." Bucky leaned in to look at it as the professor handed it to Steve. It looked kind of chunky.

Steve pulled it away from his face when he caught the smell. "Best not to inhale," Erskine said. "Just swallow it all at once."

Steve held his breath and brought the vial to his mouth, drinking it down in two gulps. He leaned forward and set the vial on the table, looking like he was trying not to throw up. Bucky and Erskine looked at him expectantly, and he opened his mouth to try to say something and started coughing. Erskine handed him his half-full glass of milk, and he took a drink and tried again.

"Is…is it working?" he asked, sounding a little rough. He cleared his throat. "Can you hear me?"

Bucky grinned. "Yeah, we can hear you."

Steve looked up at Professor Erskine, grinning from ear to ear. "Thank you," he enthused. "Thank you so much. I…"

Erskine smiled. "You're welcome." He patted him on the back. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, sir," Steve said, nodding.

"Good. Oh, and before I forget…" He lifted his wand and tapped Steve's nose, healing the black eye and split lip.

Steve had obviously forgotten about them in his worry over losing his voice, and he reached up a hand to touch his lip, wiping away a tiny drop of blood that remained. "Thank you," he said again.

"Of course," Erskine said warmly.

Steve looked back at Bucky and Bucky grinned. "Told you it would be alright." He looked up at Erskine. "Thanks, Professor."

Erskine smiled. "Anytime," he said. He sounded like he meant it. "Now," he continued, sitting down in a chair and taking a sandwich for himself. "Since we can hear you again, Steven, can you tell us what happened?"

"Oh, um…" Steve started uncertainly. He looked at Bucky. Steve had never really had to explain his fights to anyone but Bucky before. Bucky shrugged. It wasn't like you could tell the guy who'd just un-cursed you that you didn't want to answer his question.

"Well, I was going to dinner, and I came around the corner and they were already there arguing with Aaron."

"Who's Aaron?" Bucky asked.

"That kid from Ravenclaw who works in the library."

"Aaron…Steve, he's a Third-Year, he can take care of himself!" Bucky already knew where this was going.

"Well, there were two of them and they were hurting him," Steve huffed. "So, I told them to stop, and they told me to go away, and when I didn't the red-headed one came at me, so I got out my wand…" He trailed off and became very interested in his sandwich.

"Go on, Steven," Erskine prompted.

"I couldn't say the spell in time, and he hit me," he said, gesturing at his eye. "I was on the ground but I still had my wand, so I tried the leg-locking curse we did last week, but it didn't…"

"It didn't work, did it?" Bucky asked sympathetically. Steve shook his head. "What happened?" Bucky asked.

"It set his hair on fire," Steve said quietly.

Bucky had noticed that one of them did appear to be missing a large chunk of hair, and while it was certainly an amusing mental image, he knew it had just made things worse. "Pissed him off, huh?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah." Steve swallowed. "A lot. His friend grabbed me while he put it out, and I guess Aaron ran off. I couldn't tell. He picked me up and threw me into that empty classroom and he hit me, then the first one came in and did the, the thing with my voice so I wouldn't make any noise while they hit me some more," he said softly. "That's when they started kicking me," he added, nodding down at his ribcage.

As Steve had been talking, Erskine's face had gone very calm in a way that scared Bucky a little bit. "They kicked you?" he asked quietly.

Steve nodded. "He had a bruise shaped like a boot print on his side," Bucky said, seething just thinking about it.

Concern flooded Erskine's features again. "I'm so sorry, I was so focused on the curse I didn't think to ask if you'd been hurt anywhere else. Let me—" He reached for his wand.

"It's okay, Professor, Bucky fixed that one," Steve said.

"My ma taught me how while I was home. Figured it would come in handy," Bucky explained. "And he _said_ he wasn't hurt anywhere else," he said, shooting an accusatory look at Steve.

"I'm not, Bucky," Steve said quietly. "They mostly just hit my face, and that's fine now. You came in before they could do anything else."

"You're sure you're alright?" Erskine asked.

Steve nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Who were the boys that did this to you?" Erskine asked.

"I don't know."

"This sort of thing should not be allowed to stand," Erskine insisted. "The physical abuse alone is not something we can tolerate here, but the curse they used crosses the line into cruelty."

"I really don't know their names, Professor," Steve said. "Just that they were Slytherins."

"They were Fifth-Years," Bucky added. "But I didn't know them either." But that was fine. He knew what they looked like and he could find them.

"The one whose hair I didn't set on fire has a broken nose," Steve said. "If that helps."

Steve shot a grateful sideways glance at Bucky, which Erskine caught. "That should help me find them," he said. "I'll speak to their Head of House. In the meantime, if you're sure you're alright, you should probably be getting back to your common room before study hall." He gave Steve a long look, inviting him to say anything else he needed to.

Steve smiled. "I'm alright, Professor. Really. Thank you for your help."

Erskine looked at him a moment longer, then seemed to decide he believed him. "You're welcome. I'm glad you're okay."

"Thanks, Professor," Bucky said. "And thanks for dinner."

"Of course. You two look after each other."

They left his office, heading for the stairs. "You're sure you're okay?" Bucky asked.

"Uh huh," Steve replied.

"You don't look okay," Bucky insisted.

Steve sighed. "I was scared, Buck," he admitted softly. "I didn't, I mean, I've been hit before, you know? I can take it. But when they took my voice…I couldn't make a sound, and what if I'd never been able to…I didn't know if that was something that could be fixed."

For all that he was tiny and breakable and so very frequently a punching bag, hardly anything scared Steve. He was the bravest person Bucky knew.

"Steve…"

"I'm okay now, though," Steve told him. "I really am. Just, just thinking about it is kinda…You know?"

"Yeah." Bucky flung an arm over his shoulder and tugged him close. If Steve was still a little shaken up, well, that's what Bucky was here for. "So, who knew Erskine could conjure sandwiches, huh?" he asked, trying to get Steve's mind off the curse.

"You can't really conjure food," Steve corrected him. "He probably just summoned it from the kitchen."

"Yeah?" Bucky said, even though he already knew that. "Well, if we could learn how to do that, we'd put Jacques out of business."

That got a surprised laugh out of Steve. Jacques practically had a black market in stolen food going on in the common room. Mission accomplished, Bucky turned the conversation to their homework for the evening, and by the time they joined the rest of the Hufflepuffs, Steve was back to his usual self.

The next morning, Monty told Bucky that two of his older housemates did indeed have a lot of detention coming their way, and with Professor Phillips, no less, which was an excellent start. He hadn't had the chance to talk to Jim yet, though, and was rushing to leave Potions so he could catch him before Charms.

"James, if I could see you a moment," Professor Erskine said.

"Go on ahead, save me a seat," Bucky told Steve. "Yes, Professor?" he asked, coming back into the room. Had he forgotten to clean something up? He didn't think he'd done anything to warrant getting in trouble.

Erskine pulled a small book out of his bag. "I thought this was something you might enjoy reading." He handed him the book and Bucky turned it over in his hands. There wasn't a title on the outside. He looked up at Erskine, wondering if he was going to explain more. "Chapter three, in particular, struck me as a subject you would find interesting." He gestured toward the door. "Don't be late to Charms."

Still confused, Bucky made his way to the door, dodging around the Seventh-Years coming in. He cracked the book open as he made his way down the corridor, grinning as comprehension dawned and he read the list of jinxes and hexes outlined in the third chapter. Forget just a good guy. Erskine was _awesome_.

* * *

The junior teams didn't get to play as often as the regular teams, but today the Gryffindor and Slytherin juniors finally had their first match. There was a long-standing rivalry between the two houses, so the stands were packed—even older students who didn't usually bother with junior games had turned up.

Steve and Bucky found a seat next to Jacques and Gabe. "Welcome to this afternoon's Quidditch game, ladies and gentlemen!" Howard Stark, a Fifth-Year Ravenclaw, yelled from the commentator's booth. "As you all know, Gryffindor and Slytherin have been neck and neck all year, and the junior teams are here to keep the fight going! This is their first game against each other so it's anybody's guess as to what will happen!"

Steve bounced in his seat nervously as Stark introduced the Slytherin team—they only had the one class with the Slytherins, and the only one of them he really knew was Monty, who was playing Chaser. It had taken a bit of work to get the Gryffindors to let Peggy on the team—getting in trouble with Phillips was a strong deterrent. People liked Bucky, though, so Bucky got him in and then Steve did all the talking. Bucky called it one of his speeches about righting the injustices of the world, though really all he'd done was lay out why it wasn't fair that she couldn't play and why she should get to. He'd convinced them to give her a shot, and they happily jumped on board after they saw her play, working as team and a house to keep it a secret. And now it was the big moment. "She'll do great," Bucky whispered, elbowing him in the side.

"And here comes Gryffindor!" Howard announced. "Captain this year is Timothy Dugan. He's a Beater, and I sure wouldn't want to be in his way! Here come Chasers Michael O'Brian and Colin Fraser—Fraser was a Beater last term, interesting development."

Howard continued his introductions and Steve shot a look at Professor Phillips—not the face of a man in the know. It would seem their secret had managed to stay that way so far.

"And here—ladies and gentlemen, this is a surprise!" Stark said loudly. "Second Beater for the Gryffindor team, Peggy Carter!" Surprise rippled through the stands. Phillips' face had turned an interesting shade of purple. "This…is certainly going to be an interesting game, everyone," Stark continued, recovering his composure. "Let's get started!"

The game got going, but murmurs and whispers shot back and forth across the stands. Every eye was on Peggy. Steve really hoped this had been a good idea.

The Slytherin Beaters were paying a lot of attention to Peggy, but so far she'd blocked every shot that came at her. Another Bludger came at her while she was mid-field, and she sent it flying toward the Slytherin goal posts. A collective gasp sounded through the stadium as the ball hit the Keeper with a whack loud enough to be heard in the stands, leaving him hanging from his broom with one hand and clearing the way for Michael to score the first goal of the game. Nobody was whispering after that.

"Amazing!" Howard shouted, barely audible over the cheers. "All the way from mid-field! What a shot! Peggy Carter, ladies and gentlemen!"

Bucky was on his feet, whooping and hollering, and Steve was standing on the bench clapping. "She did it!" he yelled.

"Hell, yeah, she did!" Bucky shouted back. "Get 'em, Peggy!"

The game didn't slow down after that, and neither did the shouting. Everyone in the stands was on their feet, cheering, clapping and hissing. The game was close the whole way, but Gryffindor pulled ahead in the end. Steve and Bucky ran down to the field with Gabe and Jacques to congratulate their friends. Peggy was the star of the moment, the rest of the team lifting her up on their shoulders and cheering. When they finally broke up to hit the showers, Peggy broke away, running towards Steve and Bucky as they made their way to the door. "Steve!" she called.

Her skin was still flushed and her hair was kind of everywhere and blood was trickling from a cut on her eyebrow, but she was beaming. Steve didn't think she'd ever looked prettier. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

She grinned. "They told me what you did."

"Oh, well, uh, I didn't really do anything and it just seemed like you should get to try, and you, you really didn't need me anyway, you were great out there, and—"

She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and he sputtered to a halt and forgot all the words he knew. "Thanks," she said again, then turned and ran to the locker room.

He wasn't aware that he was standing there with his mouth hanging open until he heard Bucky chuckling behind him. "That was smooth, Steve. Real smooth." Steve continued to stand there and Bucky laughed and looped an arm over his shoulders, tugging him towards the door.

"Did she…" Steve stammered, feet following Bucky automatically. "She kissed me?"

"Yeah, she did," Bucky laughed. He punched him in the arm. "Way to go, man."

"I, but she…" He put a hand up to his cheek. He still felt the quick brush of her lips.

"Barnes! Rogers!"

"Oh, crap," Bucky whispered. He turned slowly around with Steve to face Phillips, whose bark had pulled Steve right back down to earth.

"Is he gonna kill us?" Steve asked. "He's gonna kill us, isn't he?"

"Kinda looks like it," Bucky agreed.

"Gentlemen," Phillips said, coming to a stop in front of them.

"Sir?" they replied, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

"Hogwarts Quidditch rules clearly state that girls are not permitted to play on House teams. Were you aware of that?"

"Well—"

"Why do I get the feeling you two had something to do with this?" he barreled on.

"But, Sir, we're not in Gryffindor, we wouldn't—" Bucky started.

"Don't get smart with me, Barnes," Phillips said.

"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir."

Phillips stared down at them for a long moment. Steve wondered if he was trying to kill them with his brain. Could wizards do that?

"The rules at Hogwarts come from years of tradition and the experiences of people who are smarter than you. They are not suggestions to be taken lightly," Phillips said.

"No, Sir," the boys said.

"As the years go by, there are occasions we find that certain rules need to be modified." He looked down at them again. "Miss Carter has been very insistent on this point since the day she arrived, and it would seem, in this case, that she is correct."

Steve shot a quick glance at Bucky. This, maybe, was good? It sounded like he was okay with Peggy being on the team. It also sounded like he still wanted to murder them.

"Very few people ever try to prove me wrong anymore," he continued. He leaned down to glare at them, his voice soft and dangerous. "Just because you've done it once, don't think you can ever try to do it again."

"Yes, Sir," they whispered. There was something behind the very dangerous look on his face, something that sort of looked like a smile. Steve had never seen Phillips smile before. It was oddly unsettling.

"What are you still standing here for?" he asked, straightening. He waved toward the castle and they nodded and took off running.

* * *

Steve loved it at Hogwarts. He loved the magic, he loved the castle, he loved the fact that he had friends. But there was just something about being back at home. When the train had rolled into the station, his ma had been right there with Bucky's parents and little sister, and he bounded off the train and hugged her. "Welcome home, sweetie," she said, hugging him tightly.

"I missed you, Ma," he told her.

"I missed you too," she replied, kissing the top of his head. She pulled away and ruffled his hair. "I think you've gotten taller since Easter."

"Really?" Steve asked hopefully.

She smiled and kissed his cheek. "Looks that way to me. Let's go get your trunk."

They rode back to their apartment with Bucky's family. Becky chattered a mile a minute and Bucky tried to act annoyed, but Steve could tell he was glad to see her. Mr. Barnes helped him get his trunk up to their apartment, and Steve was able to drag it to his room from there. His room wasn't as nice as the one in the Hufflepuff dormitory, but it was his and it felt like home. He unpacked quickly, putting his wand in the bottom of his trunk. He was mindful of the rule not to do magic away from school, and he was a little relieved not to have to worry about it for a while.

He'd helped his ma make dinner—the food was delicious at Hogwarts, but there was nothing to beat home cooking. She'd asked more questions about his first year, and he'd told her everything he could remember, including Jacques' black market on stolen food and Peggy's triumphant admittance to the Quidditch team.

"You know," his ma said as they set the table. "Between your letters and what you've been saying, you talk about this Peggy girl quite a lot. Is she someone special?"

Steve felt his cheeks going red. "Well, she, I mean, she's my friend, and, I guess…I mean, I don't know…"

His ma laughed. "Sounds to me like you're sweet on her."

"Ma," Steve whined, blushing even more.

"Alright," she laughed again. "Not another word."

They'd listened to their favorite mystery show on the radio after dinner, and when Steve went to bed later, it took him a little while to fall asleep. He'd gotten used to the breathing and snoring of four other people, and his room felt oddly quiet.

His ma had to go back to work at the hospital the next morning, so he spent most of the day with Bucky. His parents were just as welcoming as always, but they seemed more reserved than usual. "Hey, Buck?" Steve asked later that afternoon. "Is everything okay?"

"Huh?" Bucky asked, looking up from his trunk. He hadn't unpacked it yet, but was now under orders to do so. "What do you mean?"

"With your folks," Steve said a little awkwardly. He didn't want to sound like he was being nosy. "They seem kinda…"

"Oh," Bucky said. He nodded. "Yeah, it's—there was this thing on the radio last night. One of the wizard channels." Steve and his ma didn't get those. "Some bad stuff went down in St. Louis a couple days ago. A bunch of people died. The police think it had something to do with a gas line exploding, but the Aurors think it was Grindelwald."

"Oh," Steve said quietly. There'd been whispers about Grindelwald and his dark wizards around school. They talked about magical superiority and using force to rule everyone without magic—no one had taken them too seriously until a couple years ago, when the violence started. Non-magical people and wizards alike were targets—especially wizards who tried to defend their non-magical neighbors. They boys had learned recently that Jacques, who normally would have been at a French school of magic, had lost his family that way. His only surviving relative was a cousin in England. "They're sure he's over here? I thought he was in Europe."

Bucky shrugged. "They seemed pretty sure. My folks are trying to act okay about it but I think they're pretty worried. Pop thinks if it keeps going like this, it might turn into some kind of war."

"A wizard war?" Steve asked. There hadn't been one of those in a long time.

"An everybody war," Bucky answered. "Like, you know all that stuff on the regular radio about what's going on in Germany?" Steve nodded. "Pop says a lot of wizards think Grindelwald has something to do with that too."

Steve nodded slowly. He could see why Bucky's parents were worried. "Hey." Bucky bumped his arm. "It's okay. There's Aurors all over this thing. They'll catch him."

"Do you think Phillips is one of the ones after him?" Steve wondered.

Bucky smiled. "Oh, no doubt. I sure wouldn't want to be Grindelwald if Phillips caught me."

Steve laughed. Bucky always knew how to cheer him up.

* * *

Most of the summer passed like all the ones before it had. Bucky could tell his parents were worried about this Grindelwald business, but no more attacks like the one in St. Louis had been reported, and things seemed to be settling again. He and Steve went to ball games and played in the park. They took Becky to the fair and joined the neighbor kids in playing in water from the fire hydrant when it got hot. Steve got beat up in a couple of alleys and parking lots because that's just what Steve did, and while Bucky wished he could use some of the curses he learned from Erskine's book, there was still something satisfying in landing a good punch. And, hey, the guys who picked on Steve here weren't hexing him, so that was something.

For the Fourth of July, there was a big cookout down in the street. Bucky's pop was grilling hot dogs—and great as the food at Hogwarts was, there was nothing to beat a good old regular hot dog, fresh off the grill. There was lemonade and soda and ice cream, and so many pies and cakes and cookies it seemed like the ladies on the block must have been baking for weeks. As evening fell, people drifted back to their apartment buildings to watch the fireworks from the rooftops.

Steve was sitting on the ledge up on the roof, staring up at the fireworks with a smile. He'd always loved fireworks. "Hey," Bucky said, nudging him with his elbow. "Remember when you were little and you thought that people did the fireworks because it was your birthday?"

It was hard to see with the flashing colors reflecting on his face, but Bucky could tell Steve was blushing. "C'mon, I was, like, four," Steve complained.

"I was jealous, you know?" Bucky told him. "Why didn't anyone do fireworks on my birthday?"

"Really?" Steve asked, turning to look at him.

Bucky shrugged. "Hey, I was four too." Steve smiled. "Here, I got you something." He held out a badly-wrapped package.

Steve's smile widened. "Can I open it now?"

"Sure."

Carefully, Steve peeled the tape from the paper, revealing a tin of drawing pencils. "Hey, these are nice! Thanks!"

"They're magic pencils," Bucky told him, grinning. "They can draw pictures that move when they're finished."

"Wow!" Steve grinned. "Thanks, Bucky!"

"Happy birthday, Stevie."

Steve beamed. "These are awesome. I'm gonna draw something really cool with these."

"Maybe you could draw a picture of Peggy," Bucky teased.

"Shut _up_," Steve said, punching him in the arm. Bucky smirked and Steve shook his head. "Oh, wait." He set the pencils down and neatly folded the wrapping paper in half and in half again. "Do you want this back?" he asked, holding it out.

"Yeah," Bucky replied, taking it and tucking it into his pocket. "Ma will probably use it again." Wizards or not, the Depression was the Depression, and it didn't always feel like it was over like people said it was. Everybody saved and reused what they could. Bucky was pretty sure he'd seen this same piece of wrapping paper back at Christmas. And maybe the one before that too.

Before he knew it, it was time to start packing for school again. Bucky was in his room, trying to gather his stuff. Becky was sitting on his bed pouting. "I wanna come too," she said. "Why don't I get to go?"

"You're not old enough yet," Bucky reminded her. She was only eight. "You've got be eleven to go, remember?" He grabbed a pile of socks off his bed and dropped them into his trunk.

"But eleven's so far," she complained, flopping back onto the mattress dramatically. She propped herself back up and fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of her dress. "I don't want you to leave, Jay." When she was a baby, the only part of James she'd been able to say was 'Jay'. She was the only one who still got to call him by his first name. "I miss you when you're gone."

Bucky stopped packing and moved up on the bed to sit next to her. "I miss you when I'm gone too, Short Stuff," he told her, looping an arm over her shoulders.

"I'm not short," she grumbled, sticking out her tongue at him, but not pulling out of the hug.

"Even Steve's taller than you," Bucky told her. "You're a munchkin." She tried to punch him, but he hugged her tighter and pinned her arms to her sides and she squealed. "But you're _my_ munchkin."

She stopped fighting and hugged him back. "Will you write to me?"

"All the time," Bucky promised. "I'll even send you a Hufflepuff scarf."

"Really?" she squeaked excitedly.

"You've gotta have something to get you ready for when you come," he told her.

She beamed and threw her little arms around him. "Thanks, Jay!"

There was a knock at the door and Steve poked his head in. "Bucky? Oh, hi, Becky, how's it going?"

"Hi, Steve," she said cheerfully. "Jay said he's going to send me scarf from Hufflepuff! And he's supposed to be packing for tomorrow, but he's not doing a very good job."

"I can see that," Steve said, looking around the room.

"Hey!" Bucky protested. "I'm working on it! There's stuff in my trunk."

Steve craned his neck to look. "There's a pile of socks in your trunk."

Becky giggled. "I'm gonna go get the rest of your laundry from Mama," she said, bouncing off the bed and racing out the door.

Bucky stood and moved to the closet, pulling books and papers off the shelves. "You ready for another year?" he asked Steve. "We're not gonna be Firsties anymore. We know how it all works now and where everything is…"

"I don't think anybody knows where everything is," Steve said. "Not even Jacques."

"Well, we know where a lot of stuff is," Bucky amended. He turned away from the closet, arms full of school supplies, and sighed in exasperation. Steve was kneeling by his trunk, pulling out everything he'd already put in and folding it. "Really, Steve?"

"It takes, like, three seconds to fold a shirt, Bucky," Steve said calmly, setting the last shirt down and starting on the pile of socks, separating and rolling the pairs. "Do you want everything to fit in here?"

"I was just gonna chuck it all in and stomp on it until the lid closed," Bucky said, grinning when he was rewarded with that _look_ from Steve.

"So, do you think you'll make Varsity Quidditch this year?" Steve asked, changing the subject.

"Man, I hope so," Bucky said, sitting down next to Steve and helping to roll the socks. "Two of the Chasers graduated, so I'm gonna try out and see."

"You'll make it," Steve said confidently.

"Not a lot of Second-Years on the team," Bucky said.

"But that doesn't mean they never make it," Steve pointed out. "And you're good."

"Bet Peggy makes it," Bucky said. "They have to have been watching her since that first game. I still can't believe that shot she made from midfield!"

"I still can't believe Phillips didn't kill us," Steve said. "How do you think he knew it was us anyway?"

"You've got that look about you, Stevie. Suspicious. And I wouldn't be surprised if Phillips reads minds or something. He knows everything."


	2. Shield Spells, Giants, and Vicki Marlowe

_A/N: Let's start Year Two! _

_Thanks to Tyrannusfan for letting me borrow Vicki Marlowe._

* * *

"Hey, Jacques, have you seen Bucky?" Steve asked. It was a nice day, and there was hardly anyone in the common room. Jacques was taking advantage of the empty space to spread out across most of the floor and build…something. Steve wasn't sure what it was. At the moment it was mostly a pile of sticks.

"Il n'est pas ici," Jacques replied distractedly, tapping a stick with his wand and attaching it to another stick.

"I know he's not here," Steve said. After a year together, he'd picked up a little bit of French. Simple conversation he could do—if Jacques didn't speak too quickly. "Do you know where he is?"

Jacques sat up, looking thoughtful. "Je l'ai vu plus tôt avec cette fille. La jolie avec les boucles rouges." He smiled. "Elle est _très_ belle. Peut-être que tu devrais le chercher plus tard." He smirked and returned to his pile of sticks.

Steve wasn't sure what exactly Jacques had said, but he'd caught something about a girl. Bucky had gotten pretty popular with the girls since coming back to school. Not that they hadn't noticed him last year, but he'd gotten taller, his voice was deeper, and he had made the Varsity Quidditch team.

Steve was debating whether he should still go look for him or not when he came through the door. "Hey!" he said. "Sorry, am I late? I, uh, I got caught up talking to Vicki."

"Vicki? Vicki Marlowe?" Steve asked, raising an eyebrow. Vicki Marlowe was in Ravenclaw and was very pretty, very smart, and very popular. She was also a Third-Year, which, no matter how popular Bucky was with the girls, put her well out of his league. Then again, maybe it didn't.

"Yeah," Bucky said, a faint pink rising in his cheeks as he smiled. "Shut up, Jacques," he added as Jacques whistled before cackling at Bucky's admonition. "So," he said turning back to Steve. "Shield spells?"

"Yeah," Steve nodded. They had started working on them last week in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Steve was terrible at them. It probably didn't help that he'd missed the first two days due to being in the infirmary. Herbology class immediately prior had not gone well—turns out he was allergic to mandrakes.

"Alright, so, let's see how you're holding your wand, first of all," Bucky said, pulling out his own wand.

Jacques popped back into view from behind the couch. "Non, non, non!" he exclaimed. "Tu ne vas pas faire ça ici! Tu va casser ça!"

That was too fast for either of them to catch, but the way Jacques moved in front of his construction got the message across. Steve supposed that was fair. Jacques was reasonably patient with Steve's magical mishaps, especially considering that a lot of them happened to him, but he _had_ been working a long time on…whatever that was. And it was made of wood. Probably best not to practice around anything flammable.

They started again in an empty classroom. "Okay, so show me what you've got," Bucky said.

Steve concentrated, focused on the incantation and waved his wand. It sort of sparkled around his hand. A little bit. That was the best he'd been able to manage so far.

"Okay, so that's a start," Bucky said.

"I'm shielding three fingers," Steve snapped. "That's only going to work if someone's aiming at a very specific part of my hand."

"Better than nothing. At least those fingers are safe."

"Shut up."

"So, part of the problem might be that you're drawing out the 'o' at the end of _protego_ too much. Shorten the 'o; and put more emphasis on the 'e'."

"_Protego_?" Steve tried.

"Yeah, more like that. Try it."

"_Protego_!" Steve said, waving his wand. The sparkles were a little brighter, but that was it.

"It still sort of sounds like a question," Bucky said. "Like, you sound like you don't want it to work. Say it with confidence."

"I'm not confident," Steve protested. "If it works at all, it'll probably just set something on fire."

"Uh uh," Bucky said. "Don't be like that. Confident. You can do this. You just need practice. If it sets something on fire, we'll put it out."

Steve took a breath. Confident. Okay. Sure. "_Protego_!"

They worked for a while with varying degrees of success, making a little more progress after Bucky noticed that Steve's wrist movement was off. The shields required a great deal of concentration and were still not impressively sized, but if he ducked, they would cover most of him. When he could get them to appear.

"See?" Bucky said proudly. "You're getting it. Let's try it with me throwing a spell at you now, okay?"

"What spell?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Just a disarming one. The point of the shield is to protect you from spells, right? So, now that you can actually make one, we should see if it works."

"Yeah, okay."

This was hardly the heat of a battle or anything, but adding something else to try to think about seemed to make it harder. It was hit or miss as to whether the shield would actually appear. Steve couldn't tell what he was doing differently when it _did_ work.

"You just have to practice," Bucky insisted. They'd been here for over an hour now. Bucky didn't sound irritated in the slightest at their slow progress, but Steve sure was.

"I've been practicing!" Steve snapped. He'd never been very good at magic. He knew that. But he'd hoped, he really had hoped, that the longer he was at Hogwarts, he would get better at it. He didn't mind having to work for it, but working without anything to show for it was becoming increasingly discouraging.

"Hey," Bucky said, nudging his shoulder. "Listen. I know you have to work for your magic. I don't know why it doesn't come as easy for you as it does to some people, but it doesn't mean you're less of a wizard or anything. You can get this. You always do," he said with an encouraging smile. "If you want to stop for today, that's fine. We can come back to this as often as you need to get it down.

Something warm purred happily inside Steve's chest. "Thanks, Buck," he said softly. Bucky always knew what he needed to hear. He squared his shoulders back. "Let's go for a little longer."

Bucky grinned. "Alright." He backed up several feet to where he'd been earlier. "You've got the pronunciation down. Loosen up your wrist a little, and stop thinking about it so much. Just react. Ready?"

"Shoot."

"_Expelliarmus_!" Bucky yelled.

"_Protego_!" Steve shouted at the same time. Something vaguely shield-like happened around his wand, which jerked in his hand as Bucky's spell hit it but didn't fall. "Hey, I didn't drop it!"

Bucky smiled. "Awesome! See? You're getting this. Let's go again. Remember: react."

They practiced a few more times. Steve was managing to keep a hold of his wand, but he realized he was thinking too much about how to react instead of doing it. "Okay, react. React," he said to himself. Instinct. It should be instinct. Don't think about what to do, just react like the spell was a fist coming towards his face. He nodded to Bucky.

He felt something this time, something deep inside of him that seemed to wake up with the spell, and he wasn't sure how, but he channeled it out into his wand, and the shield, fully-sized and fully-powered, exploded out of his wand and into existence, throwing Bucky's spell back at him and sending him flying back into a desk.

Steve dropped the spell and the wand and rushed over. "Bucky?"

Bucky was picking himself up off the floor, shaking his head. "Wow!" he said.

"Are you okay?"

"Steve, that was awesome!"

"Are you okay?" he asked again. He'd hit that desk pretty hard.

"I'm fine," Bucky assured him. "I mean," he grimaced, rubbing his left wrist. "I think my wrist is broken, but that was great!"

"Oh, my gosh, Bucky, I'm so sorry!" Steve exclaimed.

"No, Steve, it's fine," Bucky said.

"No, Bucky, I'm sorry! I didn't mean—" He felt awful. He'd never hurt Bucky before.

"Steve," Bucky said calmly, resting his good hand on his shoulder. "It's fine. Really. We'll go up to the infirmary, it'll be fixed before dinner."

"I'm sorry," Steve said again in a small voice.

"It was a shield spell," Bucky said. "That was, like, the _perfect_ reaction. I've never actually seen a shield spell that strong before, that was fantastic!"

"Really?"

"Steve, that was amazing. Seriously, you do that next time someone tries to hex you."

Steve looked up at Bucky. "I think…I think I could do that again. It felt different from before."

Bucky grinned. "I told you you'd get this. Now, go get your wand and let's go to the infirmary." His smile widened. "What do you think the nurse will say when she sees us coming in and it's me who's hurt instead of you?"

Steve laughed at that. It would be a first.

* * *

"Did you guys hear about the thing in Amsterdam?" Bucky asked. He was whispering to Morris—one of his and Steve's other roommates—and Dugan, leaning in behind the plant they were supposed to be pruning in Herbology. Steve was keeping his distance—mandrakes didn't seem to trigger any allergies if he didn't touch them—but was sitting close enough to listen.

"We heard about it," Morris said. "Sort of. Does anyone know what actually happened?"

Professor Phillips had left abruptly in the middle of the school day yesterday. All the teachers were looking very grim, people were whispering, but no one knew anything beyond the fact that whatever had happened had gone down in Amsterdam. Rumors ranged from a wizards' duel in the streets to the entire city being burned to the ground by dragons.

"Well, it was Grindelwald, _obviously_," Dugan said. "I heard from a Fifth-Year he had a duel with Dumbledore in the middle of town. Took out, like, three blocks."

"No way," Steve said disbelievingly. "Albus Dumbledore?"

"He's not left Britain in years," Morris protested. "Besides, he wouldn't let that much of a town get destroyed."

"I'm just sayin' what I heard," Dugan said with a shrug.

"Gabe says he heard something about trolls," Bucky said.

"He's not too far off," a girl's voice whispered. They turned to see that Peggy had drifted over from her table. "I got this with the post this morning," she said, sliding a newspaper out of her pocket.

"You get the Daily Prophet?" Steve asked. Bucky's parents got it sometimes, although most of their news came from the radio. They couldn't afford a subscription. Bucky knew Steve still found the moving pictures fascinating.

"I started getting it this year," Peggy explained, unfolding the paper. "After the summer…Well, I wanted to know what was happening, and my mum won't tell me anything. She doesn't think I need to know. My aunt sends them to me." She spread the paper out on the table.

Bucky leaned in, shoving the mandrake plant closer to Dugan so Steve could lean in too. A large photo took up the top half of the page—piles of rubble, broken buildings, trees uprooted. It should have been a moving photograph, but there was nothing to move.

"Do they have tornados in Holland?" Steve asked. That was exactly what it looked like had happened.

Peggy shook her head and pointed to where the story began below the picture. "Two nights ago," Bucky read quietly. "A farming community outside of Amsterdam was destroyed. Twenty-one are dead, four wizards among them." He heard a collective gasp from the others, and swallowed before he kept reading. That was a lot of people. "Local authorities are at a loss, suspecting an unexpected, violent storm. Auror investigators have determined the damage was, holy cow, the work of giants?!" he exclaimed. Steve shushed him and Morris pulled the mandrake back to the center of the table while Peggy slipped the paper back into her pocket and returned to her table as the teacher came down the row.

"Everything alright, Mr. Barnes?" he asked. Professor Perkins didn't mind them talking quietly as they worked, but was not a fan of loud noises.

"Yes, sir," Bucky said. "Sorry. Um, Steve was too close to the plant and I didn't want him to get sick again."

Perkins nodded. "Mmm. Make sure you're remembering to take notes, Rogers. You'll still be tested on this, even if you are exempt from the practical part of the lesson."

"Yes, sir," Steve nodded.

The boys said nothing as Perkins took his time checking on the other nearby tables before moving away. Bucky's mind was reeling. Seriously, _giants_?! He knew they were real, but in the same way he knew gorillas were real, from pictures in books. Neither he nor anyone he knew had ever seen one. He did know they were a hell of a lot more dangerous than gorillas, and that they lived in the mountains, which he didn't think the Netherlands were known for. They were vicious and stupid and…twenty-one people, that was a lot, but…why did they stop there? Where had they come from and where did they go?

He turned to signal Peggy as Perkins finally left, but she was already back. "There's traces of dark magic everywhere," she whispered.

"What?" Steve asked.

Bucky sighed and pushed the stupid plant farther away again.

"Thanks," he said, scooting closer. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"Aurors have found dark magic everywhere," Peggy repeated. "It was wizards controlling the giants."

"How do they know?" Bucky whispered, horrified. Giants were bad enough, but wizards siccing them on people like attack dogs?

"There was…" Peggy took a deep breath, shifting uncomfortably. "There was a survivor. Just one. She's nine years old."

"Nine?" Steve whispered, aghast. Bucky felt sick to his stomach, thinking of Becky and suddenly needing to hear her voice.

Peggy nodded grimly. "She wasn't the youngest one there," she said quietly. "But her parents were wizards, so she knew what giants were and what people doing magic look like."

"That's horrible," Morris breathed.

"Why did they do it?" Bucky demanded. "It was Grindelwald, wasn't it?"

Peggy nodded again. "He's looking for something," she said. "The Aurors don't know what."

"Like in Chicago?" Steve asked. It took Bucky a minute before he recalled the incident with Phillips' face last year. Something had been stolen then, but no one knew what.

"They're probably related," Peggy agreed. "The girl said…" she swallowed. "The girl said one of the wizards—and her description sounds a lot like Grindelwald himself—thought her father had something. When he wouldn't tell him where it was, his followers set the giants loose."

Bucky's mouth dropped in horror, and he heard Steve make a choking noise behind him. Morris looked like he was about to be sick, and if Dugan got any redder, steam would come shooting out his ears.

"The girls' father broke down then and told him that whatever the thing was, someone had stolen it and he didn't know who or where it was. So he used an Unforgivable Curse to kill the family and let the giants finish destroying everything. Then they left," Peggy finished in a small voice.

Perkins started coming back their way, so there was no more to discuss about it just then. Everyone was very quiet for the rest of class, lost in thought—even more so after they got to Potions later and found that Erskine was gone too.

At lunch, Bucky didn't feel much like eating, slipping outside to sit on one of the walls overlooking the lake. It didn't surprise him when Steve showed up a few minutes later, though it did surprise him when Steve placed a sandwich in his lap. Bucky looked up and Steve gave him a crooked half-smile. "You'd make me eat something," he said, shrugging one shoulder before clambering up on the wall next to him. He pulled out his own sandwich. "You okay?"

Bucky sighed and shook his head. "I was thinking about that little girl. She's the same age as Becky."

"Yeah."

"And I just thought, I mean, think how scared she must've been. Like, what if Becky had had to watch some guy kill Ma and Pop and me, right in front of her? And then hear her whole village get torn up and, and…" He sighed. "What kind of people would do that?"

Steve shook his head. "I don't know," he said sadly. They sat in silence for a few minutes, eating thoughtfully. "It's getting worse, isn't it?" Steve asked at last.

"What is?"

"Everything," Steve replied. "Like, I don't know if I'd heard of Grindelwald before coming to school here. And a lot of people hadn't I don't think—well, except for Jacques. Do you think he's okay?"

Jacques had never told anyone how exactly it had happened, but this had to be hitting eerily close to home for him. "It's hard to tell with him," Bucky said. "He always acts like he's okay. But I'll bet he's not. Not right now."

Steve nodded. "I wouldn't be. But, yeah, we started hearing about stuff last year, and now everyone knows who Grindelwald is and it's just more and more. And not just break-ins and stuff, but…people dying."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "Pop thinks there's gonna be another big war." They'd talked about this a little back over the summer, but it seemed bigger now.

"I've never lived in a war before," Steve said quietly, almost to himself. Bucky figured he was thinking about his own pop. He'd fought in the Great War—not a wizard war, but something so big that a lot of wizards had tried to help.

"It's scary to think about," Bucky admitted. He'd never lived during a war either, but he imagined that this sort of thing happened a lot more. Especially in a wizard war.

"Why is it so important?" Steve asked. "Wizards being better than regular people? Why does it matter so much to them?"

Bucky sighed. "I don't know. Maybe they think cause they have magic powers it makes them more important. Like, they push people around because they can." He looked down at Steve as something occurred to him. "Like the jerks that pick on you. It's not like you've done anything, you're just littler than them and they can, so they do."

Bucky hoped Steve wouldn't get upset about the comment about his size, and he didn't—just looked thoughtful. "You're calling the most dangerous dark wizard in, like, a century, a bully?" he asked at last.

"Isn't he?" Bucky asked. Bullies took what they wanted by force, they hurt people because they could, and they had idiotic reasons for deciding who 'deserved' to be a target. He'd seen enough of that watching people go after Steve, and he realized this was the same. Just on a much, _much_ larger scale.

"You're right," Steve said, narrowing his eyes. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled a little bit.

"What?" Bucky asked.

"Nothin'."

Bucky nudged him with his elbow. "C'mon. What?"

Steve smiled, then blushed a little bit. "I was just thinking…If Grindelwald and his guys are bullies, then what we need is…" He looked down. "The world needs a…a Bucky," he finished awkwardly.

Bucky stared at him a long moment before a smile broke out on his face. He huffed a soft laugh, and Steve looked up at him, caught his grin and smiled back before ducking his head again. Bucky bit his lip, still smiling, unsure of what to say, and settled for looping an arm over Steve's shoulders. "You're somethin' else, Stevie," he said at last. The world still felt like it was getting darker and scarier, but that didn't mean it didn't still have its rays of sunshine too.

* * *

It was a sunny, snow-covered afternoon. Steve and Bucky were sitting on the rocks by the lake with Jacques, Gabe and Jim. Jim was leaning out over the lake, using his wand to etch designs into the ice.

"You know Howard Stark is taking three girls?" Gabe asked. Everyone would be leaving for Christmas break in a couple of days—everyone except the Sixth and Seventh-Years, who would be staying an extra day for the Yule Ball. Everyone's favorite hobby of the past week had been watching and wagering on who would ask who to the ball.

"No, he's not," Jim scoffed. "Girls don't really go for that sort of thing. Not in real life."

"I think they do for Howard," Steve said. It was ridiculous how popular he was with the girls. "I heard him asking Lacey Fisher, a Seventh-Year from our house, and she said yes even though he told her he was also taking someone else."

"Ellen Wright," Bucky supplied.

"Who's that?" Gabe asked.

"Slytherin Sixth-Year from the drama club," Bucky replied.

"She's the one Monty keeps calling 'tragically beautiful in a Shakespearean kind of way'. He's got a _serious_ thing for her," Jim added. "Stark is really taking both of them?"

Bucky and Steve nodded. "And," Gabe put in. "Lily Chang, from our house. She was talking about it last night in the common room."

Jim whistled slowly. "That's either going to work out really well for him, or he's going to get himself killed."

"Je la croirais si Howard a invité sept filles, mais vous évitez la question," Jacques said with a pointed look at Gabe. "Si vous y alliez, qui inviteriez-vous?"

"Hmm," Gabe pondered. "If I was going, I guess I'd ask Jenny Clarke."

"Our prefect?" Jim asked. He snorted. "She's a Fifth-Year, she'd never go with you."

"Hey, this is an imaginary ball we're going to anyway. I'm imagining that she'd say yes. Who would you take, wise guy?"

"Louise Fletcher," he replied without missing a beat.

"That Gryffindor girl who paints?" Bucky asked. He smirked. "I've seen her eyeing you in the dining hall, you know. You should ask her out."

Jim did not look up from the ice, but he sounded like he was blushing. "Maybe I will," he said, trying and failing spectacularly at sounding indifferent.

"I know who Bucky would take," Steve teased, earning a glare from Bucky and a snicker from Jacques.

"Mais, oui," Jacques said with a grin. "Il n'y a qu'une fille pour Monsieur Barnes."

"Really?" Gabe said with a grin. "Who is it?"

"C'est une fille tres jolie," Jacques said in a light, airy voice. "Avec boucles douces comme un nuage, le doux visage d'un ange…"

Jim was staring, trying to follow Jacques' French. Gabe was grinning and Steve was laughing. Bucky was trying not to turn red. "Come on, Bucky, who is it?" Gabe pressed.

Whatever anyone had been about to say was interrupted by a sharp crack, a wave of cursing cut short by a splash, and a burst of laughter. A little way down the shore, Monty was in a tree, pointing and laughing at Dugan who had just fallen through the ice about ten feet out from shore. He roared back to the surface and pulled himself out, ice crystals already forming on the bowler hat he always wore. There had been some kind of bet and Dugan had lost, which was all they knew.

"Now that the bet's over, I'd run if I was Monty," Bucky said.

"Eh," Jim said. "I'd stay in the tree. Dugan's not really built for climbing."

"Good point," Bucky agreed.

"Quit changing the subject, Bucky," Gabe said. "Who is it?" Bucky didn't say anything and Gabe elbowed Jacques. "You know, don't you? Who is it?"

"Don't you do it, Jacques," Bucky warned.

"Vicki," Jacques said at the same time, grinning broadly.

"Vicki?" Jim's eyes widened. "Vicki Marlowe?"

"Well, obviously, who _wouldn't_ want to take Vicki Marlowe? But she is _so_ out of your league," Gabe laughed. "You'd have a better shot with Jenny Clarke."

"She's not out of his league," Steve protested. He grinned. "He's already kissed her."

The other boys howled in delight, although Steve found the sound somewhat muffled due to the fact that Bucky had shoved him off the rock into a snowbank. Steve pulled himself out to see Bucky blushing to the tips of his ears, but looking immensely pleased with himself and not at all upset. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying the attention. "Gotta be careful, Stevie," Bucky said as he climbed back up onto the rock. "All this ice and snow, rocks are awful slippery."

"Vickie Marlowe," Gabe said, shaking his head. "Wow."

"I think I'm more impressed with that than I am with all the girls Stark's taking," Jim said. Bucky grinned.

"Et, bien sûr, nous savons tous qui Steve prendrait," Jacques said.

"Is that French for 'Peggy'?" Jim asked, and it was Steve's turn to blush as laughter echoed around the circle again.

They broke up not long after that—it was getting cold and Dugan had somehow managed to knock Monty out of the tree and was chasing him across the grounds. Jim decided he should follow them to make sure Dugan didn't accidentally break him. Back in the common room, Bucky shoved Steve toward the fire roaring in the fireplace.

"You know," Steve said as he sat down in front of the flames. "I wouldn't be cold and wet if some jerk hadn't shoved me off the rock."

"True," Bucky agreed, grabbing a tattered blanket from one of the chairs and throwing it over Steve's shoulders. "But, then, you wouldn't have gotten shoved off the rock if you hadn't been such a little punk," he finished conversationally, sitting down next to Steve. Steve grinned and Bucky shook his head, unable to stop himself from smiling. "Vicki is a great kisser," he added. Steve's smile widened. "I mean, I like to think I'm pretty good too," Bucky continued.

"You're modest too," Steve interrupted.

"But Vicki…" Bucky continued as if Steve hadn't spoken. He grinned and bit his lip. "Well, you're never so good that you can't learn something."

"Oh yeah?" Steve asked, smiling. He hadn't heard this part of the story.

Bucky smirked. "When you're older, Stevie," he said, patting him on the head. "When you're older."


	3. Bad Blood

Bucky was sitting on a long bench outside Professor Phillips' office, holding his sleeve to his lip trying to stop it from bleeding. In the chair across from him sat Ethan Green, a Gryffindor boy in their class, nursing a black eye and bloody nose. Both boys were glaring daggers at each other. Steve was sitting next to Bucky looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.

Phillips' door opened and he stepped out, glaring thoughtfully at the waiting boys. "Barnes. Rogers," he decided at last, nodding to his office and stepping back inside. They followed him in, the door swinging shut of its own accord behind them. He directed them to a pair of chairs and took a seat behind his desk, facing them. "Care to explain, gentlemen?"

"I hit him," Bucky said plainly. He probably should have been more polite, but he was still too angry to care.

Phillips raised an eyebrow. "You don't say?" he replied, sarcasm dripping from every word. "And here I was thinking he fell down the stairs." Steve shifted nervously next to Bucky.

"Look, Sir, Steve doesn't need to be here," Bucky said. "He didn't do anything—"

"No, Bucky, it's okay—" Steve said hurriedly.

"That's for me to decide," Phillips cut them both off. "After you tell me what happened. What exactly prompted you to hit Mr. Green?"

"It was my fault, Sir," Steve said quietly.

"Oh?" Phillips raised an eyebrow. "You told him to hit him, did you?"

"Sir, Ethan was—" Bucky started angrily but Steve cut him off.

"Ethan was saying some stuff about me, is all," Steve said. "I, uh, I ran into him and made him drop his book bag, and he, well, he said…"

"What did he say, Mr. Rogers?" Phillips asked.

Steve looked down at the floor. "He's said stuff like it before. Him and some of the other kids. I was just gonna keep walking, but—"

"What do you mean, he's said it before?!" Bucky demanded. This was the first he was hearing of it.

"Barnes, be quiet and wait your turn," Phillips snapped. "What did he say, Rogers?" Steve mumbled something neither of them heard. "Louder."

"My ma's never had magic, Sir, just my dad. Ethan knows that, and he called me a, a half-breed, Sir," Steve said quietly.

"Don't sugar-coat it, Steve, he called you a Mudblood too," Bucky spat. "A _stupid_ Mudblood."

Steve shrugged. "It's the same thing—"

"No, it isn't!" Bucky retorted. Okay, maybe they meant more or less the same thing—both implied that he was somehow _less than_, and Bucky would have clobbered Ethan for either one—but Mudblood was so much worse. Both were bigoted and unfair and nasty, but Mudblood was dirty and malicious and cruel. Bucky wished he'd hit Ethan harder. (It was beside the point that Mudblood was also technically incorrect—Steve _did_ have one magical parent, after all. It just meant that Ethan wasn't just a slimeball, but a stupid one.)

Phillips cleared his throat and they both fell silent. "Is that what he said, Rogers?" His face was carefully neutral right now in a very frightening sort of way. Steve nodded. "And that's why you hit him?" he asked, turning to Bucky.

"He shouldn't have said it," Bucky snapped. "I'd do it again."

"Bucky!" Steve hissed.

Phillips almost, just for a second, kind of looked like maybe he wanted to smile. "No," he said, rising to his feet. "He shouldn't have said it. That sort of language—and the way of thinking behind it—is _not_ something we tolerate here. I can assure you that Mr. Green will be punished accordingly for that. However," he continued. "Physical violence as a first resort is not something we encourage either," he said, eyeing Bucky sternly. "Saturday. Detention. My office, eight o'clock."

"Yes, Sir," Bucky said. He'd been expecting as much.

"Just you, not Rogers," Phillips clarified. "Now, get out of here." He waved them toward the door. As they left, they heard him bark, "Green!", and Bucky smiled at how high Ethan jumped.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked, pulling Bucky's sleeve away from where he'd pressed it to his lip again so he could see it.

"I'm fine," Bucky said, waving his hand away. "It's not even bleeding anymore."

Steve sighed. "You shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah, I should've," Bucky insisted.

"I don't want you getting in trouble just because of me," Steve protested.

"It doesn't bother you, what he said?" Bucky asked incredulously. Yeah, there was some stuff Steve had had to learn about the magical world, but that didn't mean he didn't know things. He knew Steve knew what that meant.

"Of course it bothers me," Steve sighed. "I'm not stupid, Buck, I know what the word means and what he's saying when he says it."

"So…" Bucky invited him to elaborate.

Steve shrugged. "He's not hitting me, or hexing me or whatever like he sometimes does. He can say stuff, and I can keep walking. It's not like he's holding me down and making me listen to him. And it's an awful thing to say, but it's not like…" Steve trailed off, searching for the words he wanted. "It's not like _you_ were the one that said it to me, you know?" He hurried on to clarify at the look on Bucky's face. "I'm not saying you would, I'm saying it's not like it's someone that matters that said it. I don't care what Ethan thinks."

Bucky shook his head. Steve baffled him sometimes. He was willing to fight 'til he got knocked unconscious to defend someone's honor—just, apparently, not his own. "Why didn't you tell me he'd done it before?" he asked.

"Because I knew you'd do that," Steve replied, nodding back in the direction of Ethan and his multiple cuts and bruises.

"That's right, I would've," Bucky said. "And I'll do it again. Because _nobody_ calls you that," he said, poking a finger into Steve's chest for emphasis. "You got that? You could be the first person with magic in your family since Adam and Eve and you'd still be ten times the wizard a scumbag like that ever will."

Steve blushed a little, smiling down at his feet. "Thanks," he said softly. "And I—that you did that for me, I—" He kicked at an imaginary spot on the floor. "Thanks," he said again. "But now you've got detention because of me, and I didn't want for you to get in any kind of trouble…"

Bucky shrugged. It was hardly the worst situation he'd gotten into, bailing Steve out. He didn't mind. "We've all got to learn our lessons somehow," he said philosophically. Steve looked at him curiously. "See, detention for Ethan is just emphasizing the point I made that he should watch his mouth. And for me…" He smirked. "For me, it's a reminder to brush up on my hexes instead of jumping straight to punching. Less evidence that way."

That got a laugh out of Steve. And when Saturday rolled around, Bucky washed all the blackboards on the third floor without complaining. Took him about an hour and a half. As he headed back to the Hufflepuff common room, he grinned at a muffled curse coming out of a bathroom where Ethan, as he would be for the next four weekends, was scrubbing out toilets—without magic and without gloves. A dirty job for a dirty mouth. Sounded about right.


	4. In The Infirmary

_A/N: Is one of the qualities of Hufflepuff House patience? 'Cause Bucky sure gets to work on that when Steve's sick._

* * *

Steve was sick. He hated being sick. He especially hated being sick at Hogwarts. Magic could do a lot—he minded much less getting hurt here—but it still had its limits. If there wasn't an instant cure, then it seemed to take almost as long as the non-magical way. Not a lot of middle ground.

At least when he was sick at home, he was in his room, with his ma (and usually Bucky) looking after him. Here, he had to stay up in the infirmary, and it was big and cold and empty even when there were other people in it and it echoed weird at night.

He tried looking over the notes Bucky had taken for him yesterday but gave up. It's not like Nurse Rains would let him practice any spells anyway, and his head hurt. Everything hurt, actually. His chest was tight and his stomach felt nauseous, and everything ached and the air felt like it was attacking his eyeballs. He decided just to go to sleep instead.

He woke up at some point for more potion or medicine, or whatever it was Rains was giving him. It tasted disgusting, either way. He was considering going back to sleep when Bucky came in.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky greeted. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Steve replied.

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Uh huh. You know you sound like a coal miner who smokes ten packs a day, right?"

"Shut up," Steve complained. He coughed. It hurt.

"You eat anything today?" Bucky went on, unbothered by Steve's grumpiness. He never took it personally, and when Steve was better, he did always appreciate that. But right now, he was sick and he felt like crap and Bucky worried too much and his head still hurt. He wasn't inclined to be polite.

"No, and if you say you'll sit on me until I do, I will hex you into next week." It would probably just set him on fire, but right now, Steve would settle for that.

Bucky smirked. "Okay."

Steve narrowed his eyes suspiciously. That was odd.

"I won't sit on you," Bucky continued. "But I will withhold your mail." He pulled a letter from his schoolbag that must have come with the morning owls. Steve recognized his ma's handwriting.

"Give me that," Steve demanded.

"Eat your lunch," Bucky countered, holding the letter out of Steve's reach.

If Steve didn't think he would have fallen over, he would have gotten up and jumped on Bucky. But he couldn't, and Bucky knew it. "You're a terrible, terrible person, James Buchanan Barnes," he spat.

Bucky smiled serenely and put the letter back in his bag. He grabbed the tray Rains had brought earlier and sat it on Steve's lap, cocking a questioning eyebrow at Steve as he held out a spoon.

"I hate you," Steve grumbled, grabbing the spoon and taking a tentative bite of the soup.

"I know," Bucky replied, sitting back in the guest chair and propping his feet on Steve's bed. He sat there until Steve had finished all of the soup and all of the water Rains had brought, and yeah, Steve knew he needed to eat and his stomach _did_ feel a little better now, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"Happy?" Steve asked when he was done, dropping the spoon noisily into the empty bowl.

"Ecstatic," Bucky deadpanned, moving the tray off the bed. "Here." He handed Steve his letter.

Steve opened it, not getting very far past _Dear Steve_ before the words started swimming together. He blinked and tried to refocus his eyes, which were still being pounded by the air molecules and now also felt like the letters were trying to stab them from off the page. "Hey!" he protested as he felt the paper tug out of his hands.

"Let me read it to you before you burst a blood vessel," Bucky said. Steve was still kind of annoyed with Bucky, but his head was absolutely killing him, so he nodded and Bucky started to read.

"Thanks, Buck," he said when he was done, blinking his eyes back open to squint up at his friend. Bucky smiled, folding up the letter and placing it on the table by Steve's bed.

"Lunch is almost over, so I've got to go to class," Bucky told him. "You need anything else before I go?"

"Some more water?" Steve rasped.

"Sure," Bucky said, standing and patting his shoulder. Steve guessed he went and got him more water, but he fell asleep before he came back.

He woke up to Bucky's shoes on his bed again. Bucky was leaning back in the chair, flipping through a textbook. "Thought you had to go to class?" Steve asked.

Bucky looked up, smiled to see him awake and shut the textbook. "That was four hours ago, Steve," he told him. "I went to several classes, then came back. Brought you some more notes," he said, patting his school bag. "Well wishes from Jim and Monty," he continued. "And I think from Jacques, although I'm not sure what he actually said. Peggy asked how you were doing and Rains told me to tell you to drink this as soon as you woke up." He held out a flask, and Steve accepted it, grimacing as he swallowed the contents.

"Peggy asked about me?" he asked.

Bucky grinned and handed him a glass of water. "She did. I think she's gonna come see you after Quidditch practice."

Steve washed the taste of the medicine from his mouth and set the glass down. "Really?"

Bucky grinned and cocked an eyebrow. "Yep."

Steve considered. He didn't think he looked terribly presentable. "Should I brush my hair?"

Surprised laughter burst out of Bucky's throat and went on for longer than Steve felt was necessary. "You're ridiculous, Stevie," Bucky said at last. "You look like crap; brushing your hair isn't going to help. Besides, you're sick. Peggy doesn't care what you look like. How're you feeling, anyway?"

Steve shrugged. "I'm fine."

"Uh huh. How do you actually feel?"

Steve sighed. Still pretty terrible, really. "My eyeballs don't hurt anymore," he said at last.

"Well, that's something," Bucky allowed.

Steve coughed then, a deep, bone-rattling cough that really hurt. He kept coughing and his chest kept getting tighter, and he didn't notice that Bucky had left until he was coming back with Nurse Rains. She waved her wand over him and frowned.

"I was afraid of that," she said "Help me sit him up, Mr. Barnes."

"Afraid of what?" Bucky asked, helping her move Steve to sit up and readjust the pillows behind him. Steve kept coughing.

"The pneumonia is aggravating his asthma," she said.

"Can't you do anything?" Bucky asked worriedly as Steve started wheezing. The coughing wouldn't stop, but it was getting harder to get any air in. It really hurt.

"Steady now, love," she told Steve, placing a hand on his chest. "I know it hurts, but try breathing slower and deeper for just a minute until I have this ready." She moved to a cupboard two beds over from Steve's. "And I am doing something, Mr. Barnes," she told Bucky. "He'll be fine."

She came back with something that looked like an oxygen mask without the oxygen tank attached to it. She fastened the mask over Steve's mouth and nose, tapped it with her wand, and sweet, beautiful, wonderful air started flowing into his lungs. "Better?" she asked after he'd taken a few deep breaths.

Much better. Steve nodded, smiling up through the mask.

"Good," she said with a smile. "Now, you're going to need to leave that on for a while. If it gets uncomfortable, let me know, but don't take it off."

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said. It probably sounded a little muffled through the mask. "You shouldn't be so cranky with her," he said, turning his head to Bucky after she left.

"You weren't breathing, Steve," Bucky snapped. He got touchy when bad things happened to Steve, and yeah, that had been a little scary, but it wasn't Steve's first rodeo. Actually, as far as oxygen masks went, this one was pretty nice. It didn't itch and there wasn't any tubing sticking out for him to get tangled in.

"I was breathing," Steve countered. Bucky glared. "Sort of," Steve allowed. Bucky kept glaring. Steve sighed. "I'm sorry my attempts to get oxygen did not meet your high standards. In the future, I shall endeavor to exercise more control over my involuntary bodily functions."

Bucky shook his head. "You're such a punk," he said, slapping Steve—gently—across the side of the head.

Steve smirked. "So, what did I miss today?"

The notes were easier to get through with Bucky there to explain them—and not just because there were spots where his handwriting veered toward illegible. They had notes spread out across Steve's bed as Bucky went over them and explained what they'd done in each class. Rains came back over to yell at them and made Bucky put his wand away when he tried to show him the new spell they were working on, so Bucky promised they could work on it after Steve was out.

"You look like you're working hard, gentlemen," a voice said, startling them both. They looked up to see Professor Erskine standing at the foot of the bed.

"Hi, Professor," Steve said.

"Hello, sir," said Bucky.

He returned their greeting with a nod. "I'm glad to see you're awake, Steven. How are you feeling?"

"M'okay," Steve replied, swallowing down a cough. He really _was_ breathing better. It was just an inopportune irritation in his throat.

Bucky narrowed his eyes and Erskine chuckled. "I thought you might say that. I hope you're not trying James's patience _too_ much."

Bucky grinned and Steve sputtered indignantly.

"On that note," Erskine continued, still smiling. "I've brought you something that will help. Nurse Rains asked me to mix this up for you," he said, pulling a small glass vial from his pocket. "She told me about the trouble your asthma was giving you, and this should help to clear things up."

He handed Steve the vial of bright green liquid. It certainly looked better than the last potion Erskine had given him (which had, admittedly, worked beautifully), although that was a very unnatural shade of green.

"What is it?" Bucky asked.

Erskine didn't seem bothered by his nosiness. He knew by now how seriously Bucky took Steve's wellbeing. "It's something to tone the asthma down so that it won't interfere with the pneumonia. A temporary cure for the asthma, if you will. Not something that can be taken regularly, unfortunately," he added, preempting the next question. When Steve had first gotten here, he'd been hopeful that there was some magical cure for asthma. There was not. There were some magical treatments, but that wasn't a disease the wizarding world had conquered yet either.

"It has nasty side effects if you take too much of it," Erskine explained. "But a single dose will not hurt him," he continued, looking directly at Bucky. "In fact, it will be very good for him." He looked back at Steve. "If we let the asthma and the pneumonia fight it out, you'll be in here for weeks. And I don't think anyone wants that."

"No, sir," Steve agreed. He pushed his mask down and uncapped the vial, sniffing it experimentally. Not bad. He drank it quickly, grimacing a little at the unexpected sour taste. "Tastes a lot better than last time."

Erskine smiled. "I'm glad."

"Thank you, sir," Steve said.

Bucky reached over to pull Steve's mask back up, and Steve growled and smacked his hand away. "Seriously, Bucky? I was about to do that." He pulled the mask back up and looked up at Erskine, who was watching the proceedings with amusement. "If anyone is trying anyone's patience around here, it's him," Steve said, pointing at Bucky.

"In the interests of diplomacy, I think I shall remove myself from the situation," Erskine said with a smile. "I hope you feel better soon, Steven."

"Thank you, sir," Steve said again as Erskine turned to go.

"Thank you," Bucky called after him. "What?" he said in response to Steve's glare. "The nurse said to leave it on."

"Yes, but I can't drink things with it on," Steve sighed.

"Well, you were taking your time putting it back," Bucky said. Steve opened his mouth to argue but yawned instead. Bucky huffed a soft laugh. "Look, I'm gonna go get some dinner, okay? I'll be back in a little while. You want me to bring you anything?" He gathered up the notes spread across the bed and put them back in his bag.

"Could you get my bathrobe?" he asked. He wasn't looking forward to spending another night in here by himself. The robe would offer some extra warmth, but more than that, it felt and still kind of smelled like home. Maybe it would help him sleep.

"Sure," Bucky said, smiling softly. He hitched his bag up onto his shoulder. "You make sure you eat something while I'm gone. And then put the mask back on."

"Yes, mom," Steve said sweetly.

He did eat a little bit, and he stayed awake long enough to take more medicine afterwards, but fell asleep before Bucky came back. His heart sank when he woke up to a dark room—he'd slept too long and it was after visiting hours now. He sighed, shifting back into his covers. It wasn't really cold in here—he had plenty of blankets, and Nurse Rains had built a little fire in the small stove beside his bed—but the big, dark, empty space just felt like it should be cold. There were weird noises outside—he knew it was just trees outside the window or owls or something, but the sound echoed eerily in the vastness of the room. His eyes watered in embarrassment—he was twelve years old, he shouldn't be afraid of the dark. But it was hard not to be scared when you were little and sick and alone.

He pulled the blankets up closer to his face and caught a familiar scent, even through his mask. He opened his eyes again and in the dim light from the fire, saw his bathrobe laid out across the top of his covers. He smiled. A soft snore surprised him, and he turned his head and his smile widened. "Bucky?"

"W'zat?" Bucky asked sleepily, sitting up in the bed next to his. His hair was…well, his hair was truly something special at the moment. He blinked at Steve. "Oh, hey. What do you need?"

"What are you doing here?" Steve whispered. There were very strict rules about visiting hours.

"Well, I _was_ sleeping," Bucky replied. "You okay? You need something?" he asked again.

"No, I just didn't know you were in here," Steve said. He smiled. He knew he complained a lot about Bucky being a mother-hen, but here he was, breaking the rules because he knew Steve hated being alone in here. Not that he'd admit that. "How did you get in here, anyway?"

Bucky grinned. "What, Jacques's the only one who knows how to sneak around?"

"Isn't there a spell on the infirmary door?"

"Never said I used the door. Seriously, though, if you don't need anything, you should go back to sleep. It's, like, three in the morning."

"Okay," Steve agreed. He smiled and snuggled back down into his blankets, pulling his robe up by his face. The soft fabric and the familiar sounds of Bucky's breathing were already lulling him back to sleep. "G'night, Bucky," he yawned.

Through the dark, a sleepy mumble replied, "night, Stevie."


	5. Winston

_A/N: What would Hogwarts be without its House Elves? Let's meet a few of them.  
_

* * *

It was the night before the last Quidditch game of the season, and Bucky was having trouble sleeping. He'd fallen asleep alright earlier that night, but something had woken him up, and he started thinking about the game and now he couldn't get his brain to slow down. It also didn't help that Steve was getting over a cold and was snoring. Loudly. He'd been kind enough to share the cold with Jacques and David on the other side of the room, and the congested chorus was significantly noisier than Bucky was used to.

Eventually he got up and went down the hall to the common room. There was still a fire smoldering in the grate by his favorite armchair. He curled up in the chair, staring thoughtfully at the dying flames. Sometimes he still couldn't believe he was on the team. He was the only Second-Year to make the varsity team—in Hufflepuff, anyway. Gryffindor had a couple, one of whom was Peggy, Gabe was on the Ravenclaw team, and Monty had made it in Slytherin. His teammates were great, but he felt a lot of pressure, being the youngest. And tomorrow's game was a big one. Last game of the season was big enough, but it was still anybody's Cup. They were playing Ravenclaw tomorrow, and the two houses were tied at the moment, but even if Hufflepuff won, if they didn't score at least three hundred and fifty points, Slytherin would take first. This game was really hanging on the Chasers, as people—particularly Jim, who was on the Ravenclaw junior team and wasn't even playing tomorrow—kept reminding him.

Bucky sighed, then jumped at a clattering sound behind him. He could see the hall to the dorm from where he sat, so he knew no one had come in, and the ghosts didn't come in here much, but they didn't make noise anyway. Warily, he peered around the edge of the chair and let out a startled yelp when he found himself face to face with an ugly little creature with enormous ears.

The little creature also seemed startled, squeaking and dropping the dishes it was carrying. It recovered quicker than Bucky did, bowing so low its flat little nose brushed the carpet. "My apologies, young master," it said quickly. "I isn't meaning to frighten you, Sir."

"Um, no, it's okay," Bucky replied. Whatever this was, it didn't look dangerous. It seemed to have been gathering up all the dishes that students had wandered off with from the dining hall. He'd sort of assumed they went back to the kitchen by magic, but apparently this little guy came around and picked them up. It was only a couple of feet tall, wearing what looked like a dish towel wrapped around it like a toga. Bucky saw the Hogwarts crest embroidered on the corner of the towel. Its ears were giant and pointy like a bat's, its nose was round and flat like a pug, and its yellow eyes were the size of tennis balls. It was the strangest little thing Bucky had ever seen. "Um, not to be rude, or anything, but, um, what are you?" he asked.

The little creature smiled politely. "I is a house-elf, Sir," it said. "Tis my job to clean the castle."

Bucky's eyes widened. "You clean the whole castle by yourself?"

"Oh, no, young master," the elf replied. "Is too big a place for one elf alone. We is one hundred and seven."

"There's a hundred and seven of you?" How had he been here for two years and never seen one of them?

"Yes, Sir."

"But why haven't I—" He caught himself, remembering his manners. "Sorry, my name's Bucky, by the way. What's your name?"

The elf looked at him with an eyebrow raised in surprise. "Sir wants to know my name?"

"Yeah. Sorry, is that rude? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Having had no idea that house-elves existed before now, Bucky wasn't sure what the proper protocol was.

"Oh, no, Sir," the elf replied. "Tis not rude at all. My name is Winston."

"Nice to meet you, Winston."

The elf beamed. "Nice meeting you too, Master Bucky."

"Just Bucky is fine," he said. All the 'masters' and 'Sirs' were a little weird.

"Of course, Master Bucky."

Or not. Okay. "So, um, if there are so many of you, why haven't I ever seen one of you around before?"

"We is mostly staying in the kitchen, Sir," Winston replied. "We does the cooking. We comes to clean at night, Sir, when students is sleeping."

"Oh," Bucky said, nodding. Students weren't supposed to be in the kitchen—not that that stopped anyone from trying. Jacques was the only person Bucky knew who had managed it, and he refused to share his secret. "Well, the food you guys make is great. It's really good."

Winston was practically glowing. "Why, thank you, Sir!"

Bucky looked around the common room. Crumpled up pieces of parchment were overflowing in the trashcan by the fire, and stray dishes littered the tabletops. Forgotten textbooks lay open on chairs along with overlooked bits of clothing. "Sorry about the mess," he said, suddenly embarrassed. He'd never really noticed before that the common room was always clean in the morning. It just sort of...happened.

"Oh, is no trouble, Master Bucky, no trouble at all!" Winston rushed to assure him. "That's why we is here!"

"Well, here, let me help you with those," Bucky offered, sliding out of the chair and moving to pick up one of the mugs that had rolled his way when Winston dropped them.

"Oh, no, Sir!" Winston said, darting to pick up the mug before Bucky could. "No, Sir, cleaning is Winston's job!" He gathered up the fallen dishes, sounding affronted.

"Okay," Bucky said, taken a little aback. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

Winston picked up the last mug and set it on a tray he'd dropped. "Tis no worry, Master Bucky, tis no worry." He set the tray on an end table. "But tis my job, Sir. Winston can do it on his own."

"I wasn't trying to say you couldn't," Bucky assured him. "I was just trying to help."

"Sir is a nice boy," Winston said, smiling. Bucky smiled back a little awkwardly. Winston was a strange little creature. Bucky didn't want to offend him any more by trying to help, but it felt awfully rude to just sit here and watch him clean. If his ma was here she would have smacked him for it.

Perhaps sensing Bucky's unease, Winston set down the blanket he was folding and paused in his cleaning. "May Winston ask Sir a question?"

"Sure."

"Why is Sir not sleeping?" he asked. "Tis very late. Young humans is needing much sleep."

Bucky huffed a small laugh. "Yeah. I guess I've just got stuff on my mind."

"Something is troubling Sir?" Winston asked, seeming genuinely concerned.

"Not anything important," Bucky said. Winston blinked those giant eyes at him, inviting him to go on. "It's just, it's the Quidditch final tomorrow."

"Oh, yes, Sir," Winston nodded. "We house elves is having a radio in the kitchen for listening to the games."

"You guys like Quidditch?" Bucky asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

"Yes, Sir," Winston said. "Is nice for listening to, but Winston would never be playing, Sir, no."

"Why not?" He wondered what house-elves did in their time off.

"Is so fast, and so high—Winston is not liking flying, Master Bucky."

"Oh. Yeah, my friend Steve isn't a fan of flying either."

"But why does Quidditch trouble Sir?" Winston asked.

Bucky shrugged. "I'm just nervous. I'll be one of the youngest players on the field tomorrow, and whether we win or not depends a lot on me and the other two Chasers."

"And so Sir's mind is anxious," Winston nodded sagely. "I see." He looked up at Bucky. "Winston is knowing how to fix this, Sir. Would Master Bucky like to come to the kitchen with Winston?"

"Um, okay," Bucky said. He wasn't sure how that would help exactly, but he was interested in seeing the kitchens. "I thought students weren't allowed there, though."

Winston smiled indulgently. "Sir has been invited. Is not breaking rules then."

Bucky grinned. "Okay." He followed Winston out into the hallway, and was surprised when they stopped only two corridors away. Winston poked a brick on an empty stretch of wall and a door appeared, bathing the corridor in warm light. "Wow," Bucky breathed. "I didn't know you guys were so close."

Winston smiled. "Of students what is finding the kitchens, is most from Hufflepuff, Sir. Come in." He led him inside and the wall sealed up behind them.

The kitchen was huge. Bucky realized they must be right under the dining hall—long tables were set up exactly as the house tables were upstairs. "We is putting food on tables here," Winston explained. "And then sending it up with magic. When meals is done, we brings the dishes back down with magic for washing." He pointed beyond the tables to where giant sinks lined the walls. There were stoves and ovens and fireplaces, and countless numbers of brass pots and pans hanging and reflecting the firelight, making the walls seem to shine.

"Wow," Bucky said. As they passed the tables, he saw little faces similar to Winston's walking to and fro. It looked like there were seven other elves in the kitchen. "Where is everybody?" he asked. Winston had mentioned one hundred and seven. He'd also talked about Bucky needing sleep like elves didn't sleep as much as people. He wondered if the rest of them were sleeping somewhere or if they worked all night.

"Some is cleaning around the castle, and some is sleeping," Winston told him. "We takes it in turns to be the ones awake at night. Elves isn't sleeping so much as humans." He cleared his throat. "We is having a guest!" he announced to the other elves.

The other elves all looked up, immediately stopping what they were doing and rushing over to greet Bucky with a chorus of 'welcomes' and toothy smiles.

"Tis young Master Bucky, from Hufflepuff," Winston informed them.

"Hi," Bucky said. He felt oddly on the spot with everyone staring at him. "Um, what are your names?"

A pleased murmur ran through the knot of elves, and they introduced themselves quickly, each with a little bow. There was Willow, Morrie, Wheezy, Dapple, Evy, Spangle and Tern. All of them were wearing a little towel like Winston's.

"Willow," Winston said. "Master Bucky is having trouble sleeping."

Willow's eyes lit up. "Of course, Sir," she said, bowing again to Bucky. "Willow has just the thing, Sir!" She bowed again and rushed away, evidently delighted to be of service.

"Willow is making tea very good for sleeping, Sir," Winston explained. "She makes with special herbs for calming."

"While Sir is waiting for his tea, perhaps Sir is hungry?" Dapple asked hopefully.

"Um, yeah, maybe a little," Bucky said. She seemed like she really wanted him to say yes. "I don't want to put you to any trouble, though."

"Is no trouble, Sir, is no trouble!" she squeaked happily, rushing away with the other elves. They were back almost immediately with a tray of cookies.

"Wow, that's…That's a lot of cookies," Bucky said. He picked one up and took a bite. "Thank you."

The elves murmured and smiled and bowed and hovered at his elbows. "Is Sir requiring anything else?" Tern asked.

"Um, no, this is, this is great. Thanks."

Tern bowed. "Sir is most welcome. If Sir is needing anything else, Sir must not hesitate to let us know." The other elves nodded their assent and they all bowed again before returning to their jobs.

Bucky took another bite of his cookie, watching them curiously. "So, you guys really like doing all this stuff?" he asked Winston. He'd never seen a more cheerful group of workers.

"Oh, yes, Master Bucky," Winston nodded. "We does."

Bucky shrugged. "Okay." That was a little weird, but why not make a job out of doing what you loved? "Well, you guys are pretty great at it."

"Thank you, Sir," Winston said happily.

"Can I ask why you keep calling me 'Sir'?" Bucky asked. "Because you really can just call me Bucky."

Winston shook his head. "T'would not be polite, Sir."

"Oh. Should I be calling you 'Sir' too?" he wondered. Winston looked affronted again and Bucky hastened to explain. "I just want to make sure I'm not being rude. I've never met a house elf before tonight."

"Master Bucky can call me by my name and tis most polite," Winston assured him. He lowered his voice a little. "Is more polite than some, who just calls me 'elf'. But tis not fitting for the station of a house elf to call us 'Sir' while we is working."

Bucky nodded. "Alright. Sorry if I keep saying the wrong thing."

"Tis no offense, Master Bucky," Winston replied.

It was quiet for a minute. Bucky finished his cookie and picked up another one from the overflowing tray. "Do you want one?" he asked Winston, gesturing at the tray.

Winston looked at the tray, then up at Bucky, arching a curious eyebrow. Bucky worried for a moment that he might have said something else to upset him, but a slow, delighted smile was spreading across the elf's face. "Master Bucky is most kind," he said, reaching up and taking one of the cookies. "Most kind indeed."

Willow reappeared with a gently steaming mug smelling of sweet spices. "I has your tea, Master Bucky," she said, offering him the cup. "Sir will sleep very well tonight."

"Thank you, Willow," he said, taking the cup. "That's really nice of you."

"Sir is most welcome," Willow said, beaming and bowing low.

She scurried off and Winston ushered him back to the wall they'd come through, the door reappearing as they approached. "Winston will escort Sir back—Sir will be in trouble if he is alone in the halls at this hour."

"Thanks, Winston." Getting detention just hours before the big game was definitely not what he wanted. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Of course, Sir."

"Why were all of you so surprised when I asked what your names were?" It seemed to him like a normal question—you meet someone, you ask their name, and though it didn't seem to bother the elves, it did seem to surprise them all. He was also curious about the way Winston had reacted when Bucky tried to help him clean up, or when he offered him a cookie. It just seemed to him like the polite thing to do, but the elf seemed to take it as extraordinary.

"Not many people is taking the time to ask, Sir," Winston said.

Bucky frowned. "Are people not nice to you?"

Winston shrugged a little uncomfortably. "No, Sir, tis not that. Most humans is just not noticing us. House elves is not used to receiving such attentions."

Bucky thought that over for a minute. "But it's okay that I did it?"

"Oh, yes, Sir. As Winston said, house elves is not used to such attentions, but we appreciates them very much."

Bucky smiled sadly. They sounded kind of like Steve. People tended not to notice him either, unless he was in their way. "I'm sorry people don't pay much attention to you," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't either, until tonight. But I really appreciate everything you all do around here."

"Thank you, Sir," Winston said, smiling broadly. "Thank you very much." They reached the common room then, and Winston gestured for him to go in first. "Now," he said. "Master Bucky must drink his tea and get his rest."

Bucky smiled. He drank the tea Willow had given him while Winston returned to his tidying—it was warm and tasted like cinnamon. He could feel the warmth creeping along in his veins as he drank, all the way out to his fingertips and down to his toes. "That's good," he said, lowering the cup. He yawned. "I think it's working."

Winston smiled, taking the cup from Bucky's hand and setting it on the tray with the others from earlier. "Sir shall sleep well now."

"Thanks, Winston," Bucky said. He felt more relaxed already. "And will you tell Willow thank you again from me?"

"Of course, Master Bucky," Winston said. "If Sir wishes to visit the kitchens again, Sir is most welcome. But right now, Sir must go to bed where it is warm. Sir mustn't sleep here." He gave Bucky a nudge in the direction of the dorm, and Bucky realized his eyes were starting to drift shut.

"Right. Yeah," he said, yawning again. "Thanks, Winston. Good night."

"Good night, Master Bucky," Winston said from behind him.

Bucky made it back to his room, snuggling down under his blankets and ignoring the snores of his roommates. A warm, fuzzy contentment pushed his earlier worries out of his brain, and he was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.


	6. The Perils of Magical Transportation

_A/N: Steve makes a new friend and learns that magical transportation isn't all it's cracked up to be.  
_

* * *

Steve had been held back after Charms to clean up the scorch marks he'd made on the desk and was now rushing to Defense Against the Dark Arts where Bucky was supposed to be saving him a seat. He knew he wouldn't make it on time if he took his normal route, so he ran down a corridor he wasn't familiar with but should bring him out just a few doors away from the classroom.

Breathing hard, Steve rounded a corner and collided with a group of much larger boys coming the opposite way. He'd been going fast enough that when he went down, sheer momentum took three of them with him, which Steve imagined Bucky would have found funny, given the size difference. At least, he would have found it funny until the other boys got up again and one of them turned out to be the red-headed Slytherin whose hair Steve had set on fire last year.

"You again," he growled. "Just can't stay out of my way, can you? And it looks like you don't have your friend around to throw your punches for you this time," he continued, grabbing Steve by the back of his shirt and making him squeak as his air supply was cut off by his collar. He probably would have been in for a fairly spectacular beating if the big kid's friend hadn't hissed that they were going to be late to class. "Fine," he snarled, taking a few steps in the direction of a large green wardrobe set against the wall and yanking the door open. "Better not let me catch you later, twerp," he warned, and hurled Steve into the cabinet.

Steve was vaguely aware of hitting something that felt like wood and metal and hearing the click of the lock on the door before he was spinning out of control. He felt like he was caught in a tornado, unsure of which way was up and being pulled in every direction, then there was ground and his head crashed into something hard that fell out of the way, then he was falling again but only about a foot or so before landing hard in the dirt.

Head reeling, he pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and that was as far as he got before he was throwing up what felt like everything he'd eaten in the past three years. He coughed and pushed himself away from the mess, stumbled dizzily and almost fell back into it, but caught himself and was just getting to his feet when someone appeared in front of him.

"What the hell?" a sharp Scottish voice demanded. Steve looked up to see a tall woman with fiery red hair staring down at him, looking just as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

"Wh—" Steve started, coughing again. He rubbed his chest, feeling his heart beating faster than it should and hoping he didn't pass out in front of a stranger. He drew in several deep, slow breaths, looking around a long, low room (that was still spinning a little bit) with a work table covered in tools, the walls lined with tires and wheelbarrows and other assorted junk. "Where am I?" he asked. He was pretty sure this was nowhere at Hogwarts.

"You're in my shed is where you are," the woman barked. "Who are you? How the hell did you get in here?"

"I…" Steve stammered, no less confused. "My name is Steve. Steve Rogers." At least that much he could answer.

The woman narrowed her eyes, puzzled. "Are you from America?"

"Yes, ma'am," Steve nodded.

Her face wrinkled in confusion. "But how…" She looked around the room. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know, I…I was in there," Steve said, pointing to the cabinet he'd evidently fallen out of.

"You were in the cupboard?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "But I've been…" She pointed back to the door behind her, which Steve saw led to another, smaller room. "I've been in there for hours. Have you been in the cupboard all day?"

"No, ma'am," Steve said. "I was…I was at school. I don't know how I got here."

"School?" She looked him over. "Are you at Hogwarts?"

"Yes, ma'am." At least he seemed to have ended up somewhere magical. He'd obviously gotten here by magic. He couldn't imagine how he would fix this if he'd popped out into some non-magical person's shed.

"I still don't understand how you got in my cupboard," she said. "Is this some sort of Charms lesson gone horribly wrong?"

"No, ma'am, I mean, I don't think so," Steve replied. "I was just, this big kid picked me up and threw me into a cabinet that…actually looks a lot like this one, and then I was falling out over there."

The woman continued to look puzzled for a moment before a spark of understanding crossed her face. "I see. Tell me something, Steve. The cabinet this other boy threw you into, did it happen to have some gardening tools in it?"

Steve considered. "I think I saw a rake," he said. He remembered hitting something wood and metal, and the lines of scrapes he could feel on his leg told him, yeah, it probably was a rake.

"Hmm," the woman replied. She looked at the cabinet as if she'd never seen it before. "Well, it looks like what we've got here is a Vanishing Cabinet."

"A what?" Steve asked.

"A Vanishing Cabinet," she repeated. "They come in pairs. You put something in one and shut the door and it comes out the other one. That explains why we keep losing our tools." She looked at Steve and cocked an eyebrow. "I didn't know people could go through them. Although it doesn't look like a pleasant way to travel," she finished, eyeing Steve and the spot where he had thrown up on the floor.

"No," Steve agreed. He still felt a little queasy. His heart had resumed a normal rhythm, though, so that was something. "Sorry about the mess."

"Ach, it's alright." She waved his apology away and pulled out her wand, waving it at the mess and making it vanish. She studied him and the cabinet for a moment. "I know it's not fun," she said at last. "But as it seems the quickest way to get you home…" she said, nodding at the cabinet.

"Oh. Yeah." Steve looked up at it. It made sense. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if he stepped into it carefully instead of getting thrown in. He climbed up, stood warily in the middle, and the woman moved forward and shut the door. Nothing seemed to happen. He leaned against the back of the cabinet, and when he didn't fall through, jumped up against it. Still nothing.

The doors opened. "Well," the woman said. "That doesn't look like it worked."

Steve stepped down and back out. "Would it work if you threw me in?" he asked hesitantly.

The woman smiled. "I don't think so, love. You're only supposed to set something inside for it to transport."

Steve looked up at the cabinet, glad he wasn't going to experience that sickening trip again, but concerned all the same. "I'm gonna be late to class. Professor Phillips is not gonna be happy."

"Well, given the situation, I would hope he'd be understanding," the woman said. "Wait," she added, looking down at Steve. "Late to class? What time did you go in there?"

"Um, ten-thirty?"

"Ten-thirty? In the morning?" Steve nodded. "Love, it's after six o'clock."

"What?!"

She nodded and moved to point behind her through the other room, the setting sun visible through the open door.

"What?" Steve mouthed. He'd been in that thing all day? It had only felt like a few seconds.

The woman was nodding again as if she understood now. "You're not meant to lose time with a Vanishing Cabinet. This one must be a bit wonky, which is probably why it won't let you back."

"How'm I gonna get back?" Steve wondered.

"Why don't you come inside, and we'll get you cleaned up?" the woman offered, putting a hand on his shoulder. "My sister repairs magical objects, we'll have her take a look it."

"Okay," Steve nodded. "Um, thank you."

"Of course," she said. "I'm Katie, by the way. Katie McCrimmon."

She led him out of the shed and across a yard to a small farmhouse. The wind was whipping around them, blowing patterns in the tall grass that rolled away in what seemed like endless hills. There was a salty smell on the air, and Steve thought he heard a seagull over the wind. "Where are we?"

"Scarfskerry."

"Where's that?"

"Nearly as far north as you can get on the mainland."

"That's not close to Hogwarts, is it?"

Katie chuckled. "No."

Steve frowned and she patted his shoulder. "Don't worry, love, we'll figure out how to get you back. Hi, Molly!" she called as they stepped into the farmhouse. "Molly!"

A short woman with hair wilder and redder than Katie's poked her head around a door. "There's no need to shout, I'm only in the kitchen, I—who's this?" she asked, eyes falling on Steve.

"This is Steve. He's from Hogwarts," Katie said, pointing down at him. Steve waved awkwardly as Molly continued to stare. "You know that cabinet we found at the flea market last month?"

"The one in the shed?"

"Aye. Turns out we've got one half of a set of Vanishing Cabinets."

"Have we?" Molly raised an eyebrow. "That would explain why we keep losing the shovels. I told you I was putting them away!"

"I know, I know, I'm sorry. But look, are people meant to travel through those things?"

"They can do, sure," Molly nodded. "Just the same as objects."

"I think ours is a bit dodgy," Katie said. "Steve here came flying out the thing, was sick on the floor and lost nearly eight hours going in and coming out."

"Mm," Molly grimaced. "That's not supposed to happen. You alright, love?" she asked, looking back at Steve.

"Yes, ma'am," Steve nodded. His head hurt where he had banged into the door, and his knees and his hands were sore from crashing onto the floor, and the scrapes from the rake were really starting to smart and were bleeding through the leg of his pants, but he'd been knocked around worse.

She smirked as if she knew what he was thinking and nodded at her sister. "Let Katie clean you up a bit, hey? I'll go and have a look at the cabinet."

She went outside, and Katie directed Steve to a stool by the fire. "Thanks," Steve said, as Katie handed him a cloth to wipe the dust from his hands. "Um, do you…Is there an owl or something we could send to Hogwarts? They're probably wondering where I am." Understatement of the century. He'd vanished abruptly in the middle of the school day and had been gone eight hours. Bucky was probably freaking out.

"That would be a good idea," Katie said. "Roll your trousers up, will you, so I can get at that spot on your leg." Steve complied, carefully pulling back the bloody material, and she started dabbing something cold that tingled into the fresh cuts. "But our owl's away at the moment. We'll get you sorted, don't worry. If Molly can't fix the cabinet, we'll find another way to get you back."

"Thank you," Steve said. "That's awfully nice of you."

Katie smiled. "It's a long walk back to Hogwarts, otherwise."

Molly hadn't come back by the time Katie finished with his leg and the cut over his eyebrow, so she sent him to the back to wash off all the dirt. Steve had never been in a house that wasn't an apartment before. It was cozy, with a lot of stairs that suggested it was bigger than it looked from the outside. The furniture was worn and comfortable-looking and everything smelled like a mix of woodfire and sea salt. It was nice.

Katie offered him a bowl of stew and some bread when he came back, and even though his internal clock was telling him it wasn't even lunch time yet, he was hungry since he'd thrown up all his breakfast.

"Tell me about yourself, Steve," Katie said as she sat down with her own bowl of stew. A little awkwardly at first, Steve told her about where he was from in New York and the sort of things he did at Hogwarts. Katie seemed surprised when he told her he was nearly done with his second year, but she covered it well. (Steve was used to that. He knew he was tiny.) He told her about Bucky, reiterating that he should get back after dinner, and wondering if Bucky would hug him or hit him when he turned back up.

"Sounds like Molly," Katie chuckled. "The whole protective older sister business drives me up the wall, but I'd not have her any other way."

Steve smiled at that. Feeling uncomfortable talking so much about himself, he asked Katie about what she and Molly did. She happily told him about Molly and her work popping all over the county repairing magical objects, as well as her own work as a veterinarian specializing in magical creatures. There was a third sister too, Nellie, who worked at the Gringotts branch in Inverness and came home on the weekends.

Steve found all of it fascinating. Yeah, he went to a magical school in a castle, but he'd always been aware Hogwarts was a special case. Outside of his teachers, he'd never actually met anyone with a magical job before. He knew they were out there, but he also knew that people took what they could get, especially in big cities like back home, where wizards and non-magical people alike lived so mixed together. Even Bucky's parents—from whom, pre-Hogwarts, most of Steve's magical knowledge had come—had mostly non-magical jobs. (Bucky's ma worked mornings at a post office of the non-owl carrying variety, and his pop was a mechanic at a shop that—occasionally and in the back room—worked on magical machinery alongside ordinary cars and things.) He was especially interested in Katie's veterinary practice—they didn't start Care of Magical Creatures until next year, so, outside of occasional glimpses of the giant squid in the lake, he hadn't ever seen any magical animals in real life.

"Did you ever work on a dragon?" he asked eagerly.

Katie chuckled. "People don't exactly keep them as pets, you know. Bein' illegal and all." She leaned in conspiratorially. "Although, as part of my certification program, we did go down to Wales and work a bit with the wild ones."

"Really?" he asked, eyes wide.

"Oh, aye," she nodded. "That's how I got this." She rolled up her sleeve to reveal a shiny burn scar covering most of her upper arm.

"Whoa," Steve breathed.

The front door flew open with a bang, letting in a gust of wind strong enough to make the fire flicker and announcing Molly's return. "Bloody irresponsible!" she yelled, slamming the door behind her. "Selling a thing like that at market without any kind of warning!" She dropped down into a seat across from Steve.

"You figured out what's wrong with it, then?" Katie asked, getting up to get her a bowl of stew.

Molly snorted an affirmative, cocking an eyebrow. "The apparation mechanism is well and truly banjaxed. I'd be surprised if it could transport a whole grapefruit, let alone a boy that size." She looked across the table at Steve, pointing at him with her spoon. "You're lucky you came out of that thing alive, never mind in one piece."

"Molly!" Katie hissed as Steve's eyes went wide. That thing could have killed him?! He swallowed down the urge to throw up again as he realized he'd been lucky once and then stepped back into the thing willingly. Lucky didn't even begin to cover it.

"What? He's fine."

"Be that as it may, there's no need to scare him. Can you fix it?"

Molly sniffed and nodded. "Aye. Not tonight, though." Steve's face fell. Disturbing as it was that he might have gotten killed coming here, knowing that the return journey should have been safe and much smoother was comforting. "By the time I strip the enchantments, replace the parts and reattach the magic it'll be a good month," Molly finished.

"A month?" Steve asked. He couldn't stay here for a month.

"We've still got Floo Powder though, haven't we?" Katie asked.

Molly looked up from her dinner, cocking a curious eyebrow. "For what? I don't need any of that to fix it."

Katie rolled her eyes. "Not for the ruddy cabinet, for him, you moron," she sighed, nodding her head at Steve.

"Oh. Aye, we've got plenty of that. I think it's in the pantry."

Katie shook her head. "You'll have to excuse my sister. She gets quite narrowly focused when she's working."

"That's okay," Steve said quickly. "What's, um, what's Floo Powder?" Evidently it was going to take him back to school, but he'd never heard of it.

"If you're finished eating, I'll show you," Katie said, pushing away from the table. She left the room and came back with a large jar full of what looked like shiny soot. "You use it for transportation," she explained. "Wizards can hook up their fireplaces to a network, and then the powder can link two of them up to let you travel between them. D'you not have that in New York?"

"Maybe," Steve shrugged. "I don't know anyone with a fireplace."

"Oh. Well, I know some of the Hogwarts fires are on the network. Is there a professor in particular I should talk to before I send you through?"

Steve thought. His own head of house seemed like the logical choice, and Professor Sparks was a very nice woman, but he'd always felt more comfortable with Professor Erskine. He felt like by the time this was over, there would be a lot of awkward explaining to do. "Um, Professor Erskine?"

Katie nodded, reached into the jar and threw a handful of the powder into the fire. "Professor Erskine's office, Hogwarts!" she shouted. Steve jumped back as the fire roared up and started flickering with green flames, then cried out in alarm as Katie knelt and stuck her head into the flames.

"Calm down, she's just checking to see if he's there," Molly said, not looking up from her dinner.

This explained nothing to Steve, who was trying to comprehend what appeared to be a headless body sticking out of a green fire. He yelled again a minute later as Katie pulled her head out, shaking ash from her hair and seemingly unharmed.

"He is there, and he's been quite worried about you," Katie said as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "He wants you to come on through."

"Come…but, but...what?" He had no idea what had just happened.

Katie smiled. "This fire's connected to his, so you just step in it and you'll come out in his office."

"Step in it?" Steve asked skeptically. He did not move any closer to the fire.

"It's not going to burn you. I'm fine, aren't I?" Katie asked when he didn't seem convinced.

Steve studied the fire a moment longer, then nodded. "Okay. How does it work?"

"I've already connected it, so you just get in."

"Tuck your elbows," Molly called from the table.

"Oh, right, keep your elbows in," Katie said. "Hurts something awful if you bang 'em into the chimney while you're spinning."

Steve swallowed at the thought of more spinning. It would be the perfect end to what had been a very odd day if he were to shoot out of Professor Erskine's fireplace and throw up all over his floor. He was glad he hadn't suggested Phillips.

He moved toward the fire and Katie leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. "Take care of yourself, love," she said. "Mind you don't get thrown into any more cabinets."

Steve smiled, blushing a little. "I'll try. Thanks for your help."

He took a breath and stepped into the fire, keeping his arms tight against his chest. The fire didn't burn—the green flames felt more like tall grass brushing against his legs. As soon as he stood still in the middle of it, he started spinning, faster and faster and he squeezed his eyes shut as ashes flew up into his face. He ducked his head down too—he was spinning so fast it felt like it was going to fly off. The ground stayed there, rotating wildly under his feet, until the next thing he knew, it lurched sideways out from underneath him and he was tumbling out of the fire and onto a hard stone floor. He didn't manage to untuck his elbows in time to catch himself.

"Ow," he hissed.

"Steven!" a familiar voice called, and he felt himself being lifted up off the floor. He blinked and he was on his feet, Professor Erskine kneeling in front of him with his hands on his shoulders. "Oh, thank goodness! Are you alright?"

Steve nodded, coughing on some ash he'd managed to swallow. "Yessir," he croaked.

"We've all been worried about you. What happened?" Erskine asked.

As best as he understood it, Steve launched into the story of the broken Vanishing Cabinet. He'd hoped Erskine would look more relieved once he knew what had happened, but his face grew more serious by the time Steve ended the explanation. "Eight hours?" he asked, shaking his head. "I…I don't mean to frighten you, Steven, but travelling through a Vanishing Cabinet broken to that extent could have gone very badly."

"I know," Steve said. "The lady who tried to fix it said it was lucky it didn't kill me."

Erskine tilted his head. "That's putting it bluntly, but she's right. Are you alright? Are you hurt at all?"

Steve shook his head. "Just sore from hitting the floor. Really, I feel okay, sir."

Erskine eyed him suspiciously.

"Do I have to go to the infirmary?" Steve sighed.

A tiny smile tugged at the edge of Erskine's mouth. "If you're not hurt, I think it's best you return to your dorm," he said. "I believe James might be in danger of having a heart attack."

Steve couldn't help a little chuckle at that, even though he felt bad for making Bucky worry.

"Why don't I just…" Erskine trailed off, waving his wand over Steve. Something tingled, and Erskine nodded, satisfied. "There doesn't appear to be anything wrong. Why don't you go back and get cleaned up?"

Steve looked down at himself and realized that he was covered in soot. "Thanks, Professor," he said, relieved he wouldn't have to spend the night in the infirmary. "I'm sorry for making everyone worry."

Erskine smiled. "Well, it's hardly your fault. I'm just glad we were able to get you back safely."

Steve nodded. "Thanks," he said again. "Goodnight, Professor."

"Goodnight, Steven."

Thankfully, it was near to curfew, so there wasn't anyone for Steve to run into on his way downstairs. That luck ran out as he stepped into the common room and a surprised, abrupt hush fell over the room. He didn't have too long to feel uncomfortable about what felt like all of Hufflepuff staring at him, though, because he was being knocked backward and smothered by a blur of motion that yelled, "Steve!"

Bucky's yell broke the silence and laughter echoed across the room, conversations resuming. Steve coughed. "Bucky," he gasped. "Bucky, I can't…" He wheezed and coughed again, pushing at Bucky's arm when he didn't seem to hear him.

"Sorry," Bucky said, loosening his grip and allowing Steve to breathe again. His smile morphed into a glare and he smacked the back of Steve's head. "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Ow!"

"Disappearing in the middle of the day like that!" He punctuated every few words with another slap. "Do you have any idea how worried I was?!"

"Ow, Bucky—" Steve protested, raising his arms to shield his head.

"We were looking everywhere! Even the teachers were worried!" He smacked Steve in the shoulder. "No one could find you and we thought something awful had happened! What the hell were you—"

"Would you stop it?!" Steve snapped, swatting at Bucky's arms and stepping back. "Seriously, Bucky, I'm fine, stop hitting me."

Bucky took a breath and seemed to calm down. "Sorry," he said, still sounding a little miffed. "Where were you? And why do you look like you've been mining coal?"

"I was on a farm at the top of Scotland," Steve said, pleased to see that his answer left Bucky momentarily lost for words.

"What?"

For the second time, Steve launched into the tale of the broken Vanishing Cabinet, leaving out the part about how he could have died because he wasn't an idiot. "And I look like this because they sent me back through Erskine's fireplace," he finished. "I discovered two new forms of magical transportation today, and they both kind of suck."

That got a smile out of Bucky. "Zero for three, huh?" Steve hadn't gotten much better at staying on brooms this year—he still needed Jim's charm to keep from falling off. Magical transportation so far was not all it was cracked up to be.

Steve grinned.

"Maybe once we learn how to apparate?" Bucky suggested.

"Maybe," Steve shrugged, not feeling hopeful. "I think I'm just gonna get a motorcycle," he said, making Bucky laugh. He fixed Bucky with a mock-glare. "I know you've been worried, but are you gonna let me go take a shower by myself?"

Bucky smirked and raised his hands. "That's all you, punk."

Steve smirked and headed for the dorm, his housemates smiling or patting him on the back with a 'welcome back' as he passed.


	7. The End of the Second Year

Even though teachers had been talking about them for weeks, the end of year exams seemed to come up out of nowhere. Suddenly they were here and an unusual hush had fallen over the Hufflepuff common room. The Fifth and Seventh-Years were studying frantically for O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s, but everyone else was working just as hard.

"Come on, Bucky, moons of Jupiter," Steve pressed. Their Astronomy exam was tomorrow.

Bucky sighed. "I don't know," he growled. Even though it had only been four days, Bucky was having trouble remembering a time before exams. It had been a very long week. Astronomy and Transfiguration were all they had left, but his brain was done. "It doesn't have any."

Steve's head rose from his textbook with a _look_. "It's got nine, Bucky. Come on."

"There's no room in my brain for any more information, Steve. I'm done." Steve just kept looking at him and Bucky sighed. "Io, Ganymede—which I still can't spell, by the way—Callisto, Amalthea, Himalia, Elara, Pasiphae, Sin…Sin-something. Sinope. And the one with all the ice."

"They're all pretty icy, but I think you're thinking of Europa," Steve supplied.

"That's the one. How do you spell Ganymede anyway?"

"With a 'y'."

"Alright." Bucky reached over pulled the book away from Steve. "Let's see…um…Summer constellations in the Northern Hemisphere?"

Steve listed the constellations, and they went back and forth for a while before switching to Transfiguration, their last exam, and, unfortunately, the class Steve was the worst at. He knew all the theories and how to say the words and move the wand, and he and Bucky would practice spells after class until the cows came home, but five or six times out of ten was about as good as he could get. (He had better luck in his other classes, although the shield spell was still the only one he could pull off one hundred percent of the time. It was always pretty impressive—people shooting spells at him had a tendency to fly across the room. If he could only do one well, Bucky was glad it was that one.) Bucky had quit trying to remind him that six out of ten was still a passing grade—all that did was make Steve mad, and his magic didn't work as well when he was mad, but more things caught on fire.

"What's even the point of this?" Steve snapped. "At what point in my life am I _ever_ going to have to know how to turn a tea cup into a tennis ball?"

"Tomorrow on the exam?" Bucky snapped back. That came out sharper than it probably should have—he knew Steve was trying hard, he really was, but he was grouchy and Bucky was grouchy, and Bucky was just _so_ tired. Steve scowled and picked up the newly-transfigured tennis ball, hurling it at Bucky's head. Bucky ducked and it turned out the tennis ball had not completed its transformation—it shattered against the wall instead of bouncing off.

The prefect shushed them and Steve went red, grabbing a textbook and burying his nose in it. Bucky sighed and stood up, turning around to get the pieces of the ball. Before he got there, Donovan, a Third-Year, had pointed his wand at the ball and muttered "_Reparo_", fusing it back together. He picked it up and handed it to Bucky. "It _is_ a bit of a rubbish spell," he said with a smile, nodding down at the ball.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "Thanks." He took the ball and went and sat down next to Steve, who still wasn't looking at him. After a moment, he reached over the book and dropped the ball into Steve's lap. "Here." Steve lowered the book, still glaring a little. "Sorry," Bucky added.

Steve sighed. "Me too," he said apologetically. He picked up the ball. "Thanks."

"You wanna practice some more?" Bucky offered.

Steve shook his head.

Bucky nodded. "Alright." Steve needed the practice, but if he didn't want to, Bucky wasn't going to make him. They were both running a little edgy tonight. "I'm going to bed." He didn't think he was going to get anything else useful out of his brain tonight. "You should too. It's almost midnight."

Steve sighed and glared at the tennis ball that was regaining its floral pattern as it slowly turned back into a teacup, then turned his attention back to the textbook in his lap. "In a little while," he said.

Bucky nodded and got up, making his way down the hall with the other students who were drifting off to bed. He changed quickly and got into bed without turning any of the lights on. Jacques and David were already asleep. Morris was still studying somewhere.

Bucky wasn't sure what it was that woke him up later, but he felt like someone was in the room, and he sat up quickly at the noise of a polite little cough. "Winston?" he asked, squinting sleepily into the darkness at the outline of a little creature with pointy ears.

The house-elf bowed low to the floor. "Winston is so sorry for waking Master Bucky," he said apologetically. "Truly sorry."

"It's okay," Bucky said with a yawn. "Is something wrong?" Since their first meeting, he'd been down to the kitchen a couple of times to see him (or to get food), but he hadn't been up late enough to see him cleaning again. He couldn't think of any reason Winston would have to wake him up in the middle of the night.

"No, Master Bucky," Winston said with another little bow. "Only, Winston is coming to clean, and Master Steve is still in the common room." Bucky had thought it best not to tell anyone else about how to get into the kitchens, but he'd taken Steve with him last time he'd gone. The elves had loved him. "I think he is needing Sir's help," Winston finished.

"Is he okay?" Bucky asked, throwing the blanket aside and already moving down the hall. Winston scurried along behind him. "Did something happen? Is he sick?" Visions of Steve having an asthma attack with no one around to help were flying through his head.

"Oh, no, he is alright, Master Bucky," Winston assured him "He is just…" They reached the common room and Winston gestured towards the fire. Steve was asleep on the rug. The odd angle of his limbs looked like he'd passed out from sheer exhaustion, landing facedown in his Astronomy textbook. Bucky's worry left him in a rush and he shook his head, smiling to himself.

"He is too big for Winston to be moving, Sir. I thought to put a blanket over him and leave him to sleep, but the room is becoming very cold when the fire is going out. I thought, perhaps, Sir could help him to get to bed?" Winston asked, adding this last uncertainly, as if he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing.

Bucky nodded. "Thanks, Winston. I'm glad you came and got me." The little elf smiled, relieved. "He doesn't need to be in here all night."

Winston bowed. "Is Sir needing anything?" he asked, large eyes going down to Steve and then back in the direction of the dorm.

Bucky shook his head. "I got him. You can get back to whatever you were doing." Winston nodded and Bucky smiled at him. "Thank you," he said again. The little elf bowed and returned to tidying up the room.

Bucky looked down at his sleeping friend and sighed. "Steve?" he said softly, crouching down and tapping his shoulder. Steve made a snuffling noise, but didn't wake. "C'mon, Stevie," he said, a little louder. "Time to get up and go to bed." Nothing, although Bucky noticed that he was drooling on the moons of Jupiter.

Shaking his head, Bucky worked an arm under Steve's head and pulled the book out from under him, nose wrinkling at the thin string of drool that trailed after the book as he pushed it away. "Gross, man," he muttered. He pulled the neck of Steve's shirt up to wipe his mouth. Working his arm down from Steve's head to his shoulders, he looped the other arm under Steve's knees and stood up carefully.

"Good thing you're so little, punk," he whispered, adjusting his grip. "Although you're heavier than you look." He looked around for Winston to say goodnight, but he must have gone back to the kitchen to take the dishes back, so Bucky turned and headed back down the hall.

Back in their room, he let go of Steve's legs so that he was sort of propping himself up on the floor—still snoring into Bucky's shoulder, but thankfully not drooling—and leaving Bucky with one hand free to pull the covers back. He maneuvered Steve onto the mattress and swung his feet up, untying his shoes before pulling the blankets back over him. Steve snuggled down into his pillow with a happy sigh. One of his hands slipped out from under the blanket and off the side of the bed, dropping the tennis ball he had apparently been holding on to. Bucky's hand shot out to grab it, but his reflexes were still sleepy and he missed. He gritted his teeth, bracing himself for another shatter of glass, then smiled as the ball hit the floor and bounced under Steve's bed.

"Way to go, Stevie," he whispered, patting him gently on the head before returning to his own bed.

* * *

It was a beautiful day at Hogwarts—the sun was shining, the sky was clear, exams were over and they were going home tomorrow. Just about everyone was outside celebrating. Monty had talked several of the guys into a game of football in the courtyard. Though it had started out as the British variety, at some point it morphed into the American one, and Steve had pulled himself out, having no desire to get tackled into the paving stones on his last day of school. (He had a feeling if he hadn't pulled out, Bucky would have benched him anyway—it was a beautiful, sunny June day with a gentle breeze, which meant there was a lot of pollen in the air, and he was starting to get kind of wheezy. He hated being allergic to everything. It felt pathetic. He liked breathing, though, so sitting out for a while was probably for the best.)

Peggy was sitting on a planter nearby with a couple of her friends, and she waved him over to join them. He sat down, heart pounding and still breathing hard, and Peggy was thoughtful enough not to try to say anything until his breathing evened out.

"Glad exams are over?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," Steve agreed.

"Now we just wait for results," she said. "It's going to be a bit tense around my house until the owls come. I think Mum worries about our grades more than we do." Steve wondered who 'we' was for a moment until he remembered that she had a couple of brothers—one was too young for Hogwarts, and the other one only had a year left. "What about you?"

Steve shook his head. "Ma doesn't worry too much about that kind of thing. She always says if you give it your best, then that's all you can ask for."

Peggy smiled. "Must be nice."

Steve nodded, then smiled, thinking of the day the grades would come. "She always laughs when we get mail from school—the envelope's always covered in a ton of stamps like it came from China or something."

Peggy arched a curious eyebrow. "D'you not mail things by owl in America?"

"No, people do," Steve said. "But I guess Hogwarts has a list of people whose parents don't have magic, and they get mail through the post office. Gabe gets his letters that way too," he explained, hooking a thumb out to where the other boys were playing.

"Oh," Peggy said. "Did you know about magic before, you and your mum? Not that it matters," she rushed on, as if suddenly worried she'd offended him. "I was just wondering—Kelly's parents had never heard of magic when she got her letter," she explained, pointing at a girl sitting further down the planter. "Nor had Kelly. They had to send a teacher out to explain everything."

"No, my, ah, my pop was a wizard," Steve said, stumbling a little as he usually did when bringing up his father for the first time with someone. People tended to get awkward when they found out he was dead.

Peggy must have picked up on it in his tone, though, because understanding flashed across her eyes and she nodded. "So you two were already expecting your letter, then?" she asked, steering the conversation back onto its original path.

"Kind of," Steve said, grateful for her conversational maneuvering. "I never knew if I'd be good enough to get in until I got the letter. I bet you didn't have to worry about that."

Peggy smiled. "Everyone worries about that. I was so relieved when it came."

"Really?" Steve asked in surprise. He would have thought, coming from a fully magical family, it would have been a given.

"Oh, yeah," she told him. "I was terrified I'd be the first one in the family all century not to get in."

Steve wanted to say that he was glad she'd made it in, but didn't want to come off sounding too sappy, so he just smiled.

"So, tell me what it's like at home," Peggy said. Given the context of the conversation, Steve assumed she wanted to know what it was like growing up without magic—he'd found people tended to be curious about that, like it was something weird, so he was pleasantly surprised when she finished with, "I've never been to America."

"Oh. Uh, sure. Well, I live in New York—Brooklyn—and it's a big city. So different from here." Hogwarts was out in the country, and he knew Peggy lived in a little village somewhere outside of London. He smiled. "I never saw a cow until I was nine years old."

"You're kidding," Peggy gaped. He smiled and shook his head and she laughed.

"It was on a school trip to a farm. I'd seen a couple of work horses around—not everyone has cars, so they pull milk carts and stuff. But there were cows and chickens and goats and it was like going to the zoo. Stop laughing at me," he said, smiling—he knew she wasn't laughing unkindly.

"Sorry," she apologized. "It's just so funny to think—I live in a farming village, so things like that are completely normal."

"Well, it was a big day for us." He grinned. "Bucky got bit by a goose."

Peggy howled with laughter, and even Kelly further down the way, who'd been dividing her attention between their conversation and watching the boys play, chuckled.

"No, but, tell me about the city," Peggy said, once she'd finally stopped laughing. Steve did, having to stop and think several times about how best to describe it. He'd never thought about it before, since it was normal to him. He told her about all the buildings, crowded markets with fruit and fish and people yelling, going to watch the boats down by the docks or out to the fair at Coney Island. She thought it was fascinating, as he in turn was fascinated by her description of her village, with its quiet country roads and little shops and single church with a bell tower that actually struck the hour.

"What do you do there?" he asked. "When you're home for breaks?"

"My dad likes to take us fishing, or we'll go out walking in the country or riding horses. And usually over the holidays there's some sort of fête going on, and people will come in from all over the county and there will be games and craft shows and competitions." She sighed. "When there's nothing going on, my mum tries to get me to learn things to be a 'proper English lady', like embroidery and etiquette and all that. It's frightfully boring."

"What sort of etiquette?" Steve wondered. "You just, I mean, you seem pretty polite to me." He blushed a little. That had come out weird.

She smirked. "The proper sort of things to talk about, how many forks to set at the table and when to use which one—"

"Why do you need more than one fork?" Steve interrupted.

"I asked that, and she didn't have a good answer, but she said I had to learn it anyway," Peggy said with a grin. "It's all that sort of thing. Place settings and seating charts and flower arranging. Why I shouldn't punch people."

Steve gaped at her. She arched an eyebrow. "A proper English lady," she began in a mock regal voice. "When she finds herself in the company of an inappropriate gentleman, does not engage with such a person, but excuses herself from the situation at the earliest opportunity." She huffed and returned to her normal voice. "I find it much more expedient just to knock him down and be done with it."

Steve stammered for a moment as he wrapped his head around the image she'd painted. "Well, yeah," he said, once he found his voice. "Why shouldn't you?" She smiled, looking pleased that he agreed. "Can you really knock people down?" he asked, somewhat awed.

He realized that might have sounded like he didn't really believe her, so he was glad when she answered the question in the vein that he'd meant it. "It's all in the torso," she said. "You can't just hit with your arm, you've got to put your whole upper body into it."

"I'll have to remember that," Steve said thoughtfully.

Peggy grinned. "What about you, hey? What's a city boy do on holiday?"

Steve smiled. "In the summer, there's baseball. Bucky and I go to games—we usually sit in a tree or on a fire escape outside the stadium 'cause we don't have money for tickets. But once a summer, his pop will buy tickets and we'll go and see a game up close. There's church picnics, and my ma makes the best strawberry pies, and there'll be a dance afterwards."

"Do you dance?" Peggy asked curiously.

"Not well," Steve replied, blushing a little. Certainly never with a girl before. He wasn't sure if that was what she was asking.

She nodded for him to go on.

"When the weather's nice, we'll take Bucky's little sister and go down to the boardwalk. She likes to throw popcorn to the birds. Bucky always complains about it, because he has to buy the popcorn, but he has just as much fun as she does."

Peggy smiled at that.

"When it's hot, a bunch of kids will get down in the street and play in the water from the fire hydrant. Oh, and fireworks!" Steve added, remembering his favorite part of the summer holiday. "On the fourth of July, we have a big cookout in the street and then everybody goes up on the roof to watch the fireworks at night. They're amazing. If it's a clear night, you can see all the way out to the Statue of Liberty, and she's all lit up with all the colors and everything."

"That sounds beautiful," Peggy said.

"You'll have to come see it sometime."

"I'd like that," she said with a smile.

They talked a little longer until the game broke up and it was time for dinner. Steve and Peggy eyed Bucky in amusement as he walked toward them—he was bleeding profusely from a cut on his lip, the knees of his pants were torn, dirty and bloody, a raw-looking scrape ran the length of his right arm, and he was limping.

"Rough game?" Peggy asked conversationally.

Bucky shrugged. "Next time we'll play on the grass."

"You look terrible," Steve said. "Can you even see out of that eye?" he asked. Bucky's right eye was spectacularly bruised and was starting to swell shut.

"Not really," Bucky admitted. "I'll go up to the infirmary and get it fixed after dinner."

Steve smirked and leaned toward Peggy. "His eye looked like that after the thing with the goose too," he whispered. "It knocked him down and he hit the fence."

Peggy started laughing so hard she fell off the planter, continuing to laugh from where she sat on the ground. Steve laughed at the confused look on Bucky's face.

"What?"

"Nothing," Peggy managed to say between gasps for air.

Bucky turned a one-eyed glare on Steve. "What?" he asked again.

"We were just talking," Steve said innocently.

"About?"

"Just what it's like where we're from," he said. "I told her about Brooklyn, and she told me about the village where she lives."

"I fail to see why that's so funny."

Peggy was still laughing.

"You know, they've got farm animals all over the place where she's from?" Steve continued, slowly edging behind the planter as he spoke, trying to act nonchalant. "Cows, goats…" He looked significantly at Bucky. "Geese."

Bucky looked confused a minute longer, then his eyes widened (as much as they could) when realization struck. "Oh, you are such a punk!" he exclaimed, lunging in Steve's direction as far as his leg would allow.

Steve darted the rest of the way behind the planter, still grinning. He was banking on Bucky not being up to running just yet with that limp.

"Okay," Bucky said, nodding, accepting momentary defeat. "Alright. Go ahead and run. Just remember, it's a long train ride tomorrow, my friend."

* * *

_Just a note for the outer space fans out there-I do know that there are more than 9 moons of Jupiter, but in 1940, that was all we'd found so far._


	8. Boys In Brooklyn

Bucky was lying on the floor in the living room, pamphlets and loose sheets of paper spread out in a ring around him. Steve was upside down in a chair, his little feet sticking up over the back and his head on the footstool, flipping through a leaflet. Their teachers had sent them home with what felt like an entire library of information on the courses they could choose to take in their third year. There was a lot to go through.

"How're we supposed to know what to take?" Steve asked, dropping his leaflet with a sigh. "I've just read this whole thing, and I still don't understand what Arithmancy is."

"I dunno," Bucky said. "Like, this is supposed to be our path toward the future or whatever, right?"

"That's what Professor Phillips said," Steve replied. "That's a lot of pressure to put on a twelve-year-old," he complained.

Steve hadn't had his birthday yet, but Bucky didn't know that it would matter. He'd been thirteen for a couple of months, and he didn't think that had given him any kind of leg up on the task. "Yeah," he agreed. He felt awfully young to be deciding what he wanted to do with his life.

"Bucky, do you really need to cover the entire living room floor?" his ma asked, appearing in the door with her sewing basket.

"Sorry, ma," he said, sitting up and scooping up his papers into something resembling a stack.

"Sorry, Mrs. Barnes," Steve chimed in, rolling over and pulling the papers he'd dropped back together.

Once the floor was visible again, she made her way to the couch and sat down. "Still looking over all your options?" she asked.

"There's just so much here," Bucky sighed.

His ma smiled. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. Read enough to make an informed decision, but it's not as though you're locking yourself in for life."

"Professor Phillips sure made it sound that way," Bucky replied.

"Professor Phillips takes everything incredibly seriously," she said, looking through her basket. He'd been a teacher at Hogwarts when his ma had been a student. "There's no rule anywhere that says you're not allowed to change your mind."

"That's good to know," Steve said.

She looked up and smiled. "You can always narrow it down more after your fifth year. At this point, I'd say just take something that interests you. See what's out there. Steve, darling, I don't see how in the world that can be comfortable," she added. After picking up his papers, Steve hadn't rolled back over—his feet were still sticking up over the back of the chair, and his head was still down on the footstool, but he was on his stomach now. Bucky agreed with his ma. It did not look like a particularly tenable position for a human spine to be in.

"Oh, well…" Steve said, shrugging a little awkwardly but not rolling over.

"Could you help us, ma?" Bucky asked. Maybe it would be easier to pick something if he understood better what they were picking between. He'd read so many of these pamphlets the words had started to blur together.

"Of course," she said. "Here, come here, let me measure your shoulders," she added, stretching out the tape measure she'd been looking for. "What questions do you have?"

Bucky stood, turning his back to his ma. The tape measure flitted up to his shoulders. "Arithmancy's a kind of fortune-telling, right? How is it different from regular Divination?"

"Well," she began, noting the measurement then gesturing for him to lift his arms. "Divination deals more with crystal balls and tea leaves, star gazing, that sort of thing. Arithmancy's much more mathematical. There are symbols and equations and formulas. Keep your arms up and turn around," she said, making another mark on her paper. The tape measure wrapped itself around his chest. "With either one," she continued. "There's really only so far studying will get you. It's one of those things you have to have a gift for."

"So, if we don't have the gift, we shouldn't bother with those?" Steve asked.

"Well, you don't know if you've got the gift yet," she told him. "You can put your arms down now, dear, I'm done." The tape measure fluttered down into the basket.

Bucky returned to his stack of papers. "So, we've got to take the class to find out if we can do it?"

She nodded. "Not a lot of people have it, but even for those that do, it's a…fuzzy sort of thing. Divination in any form is usually pretty iffy. But," she added. "Even if you don't have the gift, it can be interesting to study."

"So, we'll put a 'maybe' on that one," Bucky said. "What were you measuring me for?"

"I'm altering one of your father's old coats for you," she said, pulling a length of dark gray material from her basket. "You're going to need a new one before you go back to school, and you do seem to keep growing," she finished with a smile. His old coat _was_ getting pretty tight in the shoulders. Maybe he should pass it on to Steve, though it would still be a little big. "On that note, it's a shame they don't offer Household Magic anymore. I'll have to teach you boys some of the spells while you're here."

"Like what?" Steve asked, interestedly.

"Oh, quick fixes for torn clothes, small repairs, some general first aid, that sort of thing. Just some useful little spells to keep handy."

"That sounds great, Mrs. Barnes. Thank you," Steve said.

"Did you ever take Care of Magical Creatures, ma?" Bucky asked. That one sounded interesting. Well, as long as they got to work with actual magical creatures and not just read about them.

"Oh, yes, that's a good one," she said. "I think you boys would enjoy that one. The creatures you study depend on the teacher, of course, but there's always something interesting. In my sixth year, they had a baby basilisk."

"Wow!" they exclaimed.

She smiled fondly. "That's when I met your father, you know. I had a job as a student aide in the infirmary, and your father…" She chuckled. "Your father had not been paying attention in class and got himself bitten."

"Really?" Bucky asked, his eyes wide. He'd never heard this story.

"Oh, he was alright," she assured them. "The babies don't have that deadly stare, and their venom isn't strong enough to kill anything, but it certainly hurts. He couldn't move his left arm for a month. He turned up in the infirmary while I was on duty, and I thought how nice it was that I would get a chance to look after this handsome young man for a while."

"Ma," Bucky whined, feeling his cheeks going red. He didn't want to hear about _that_. Steve snickered and his mother laughed, reaching down to pat his head.

"Sorry, dear. I didn't think you embarrassed so easily."

Steve laughed again and Bucky glared at him. "So, we'll put Care of Magical Creatures in the 'yes' pile," Steve said.

It did sound interesting, but…"If you get yourself bitten by a basilisk, I'm gonna thump you," Bucky warned. Being mauled by the creature of the week just seemed like the sort of thing Steve would do.

"What about this one?" Steve asked, ignoring Bucky and picking up another pamphlet. "Muggle Studies. What's a muggle?"

"A muggle," his ma said, no longer laughing. "Is what people in England call someone who doesn't have magic."

Bucky looked up at his ma curiously. She didn't sound happy about that. "What's the matter, ma?"

She shook her head. "I've never liked that word."

"Why not?" Steve asked, obviously as curious as Bucky.

She sighed, taking a minute to put some pins into the coat on her lap. "When you make up a name for someone who's not like you," she said at last. "It makes it that much harder to ignore those differences. You start looking at them condescendingly at first, feeling sorry for them because they can't do what you do, and you start pulling away and separating yourself. The next thing you know, you think you're better than them, and it's a slippery slope down from there." She sighed. "With all this business with Grindelwald and his magical superiority manifesto, it just blurs that line that much more. Witches and wizards, we're no better than people who can't do magic, but it's easy to start thinking that way if you start dividing people into groups like that."

"Do a lot of wizards think they're better than other people?" Steve wondered.

Bucky's ma sighed. "I don't know. I'd like to think the answer is no, but sometimes it does seem like it more and more these days, what with everything you hear on the news. But most wizards and witches I've met don't think that way. Even if they do use some of the terminology," she added.

"So why do they do it?" Bucky asked. "Why do they call them m—that?" He'd almost said 'muggles', but if his ma didn't like the word, then he wouldn't use it.

"Probably because it's easier to say," she sighed. "People do like to shorten things. Even here in the States, we've got our own variant of it."

"We do?" Bucky asked. He'd never heard it before.

His ma nodded. "No-maj. It's supposed to be short for non-magical."

Steve snorted. "That sounds even stupider than muggle."

His ma smiled. "I agree with you there, dear."

"So, what do they even study in that class?" Bucky asked.

His ma shrugged. "Things like electricity and cars and the post office and all the things that aren't magical that people do."

Bucky wrinkled his nose in confusion and looked at Steve, who looked equally puzzled. His ma laughed at the expressions on their faces. "Some wizards, especially in Europe, don't live mixed in to non-magical communities. They use candles instead of electricity, brooms instead of cars, and owls instead of local mail. They don't know about any of it."

"Is that why Hogwarts doesn't have electricity?" Steve asked. "I always thought it was just cause it was a castle."

"Well, it is an old building, but yes, that's why," she told him. "Integrating magic and technology is very tricky, so most people don't bother."

"There's really a class for all that?" Bucky asked with a snort. He eyed the pamphlet again. "Three years of classes? How hard is it to figure out?"

"It's not all that difficult," his ma agreed. "It's part of that idea of separation I was talking about. You pull yourself too far away, and suddenly the people who live across the street are these strange creatures."

Bucky shook his head. "People are weird."

His ma chuckled. "Yes, they are."

"So, that one's out," he said, tossing that pamphlet to the side.

His ma looked down at her watch. "Speaking of the post office, I need to run down and pick up my check before they close for the weekend. I can help you boys with the rest of this when I get back, if you'd like."

"Okay. Thanks, ma," Bucky said.

"Thanks, Mrs. Barnes," Steve said distractedly as she left the room.

"What's up, Steve?" Bucky asked, scooting closer to Steve's chair.

"Hmm? Oh, I was just thinking."

"About what?" He wondered if all this 'muggle' talk bothered him. Mrs. Rogers didn't have magic. Bucky's family (and the few other wizards in the neighborhood) had never treated her any differently for it, and Steve had grown up assuming that wizards and regular people just got along everywhere. Bucky had too. It had been kind of a rude awakening for them both, but especially for Steve, when they got to Hogwarts and found out there were people who didn't think that way.

"Just stuff. I'll bet Ethan calls people without magic 'muggles'," Steve said, frowning. Ethan had taken issue with his non-magical heritage last year, after which Bucky had broken his nose.

"Yeah, well, Ethan's an idiot, isn't he?" Bucky said. That got a little smile out of Steve. "Ma's right, it's just a stupid name for a stupid thing."

"But I didn't even know it _was_ a thing," Steve said. "I mean, I know some wizards don't like non-magical people, but I thought they were just jerks, you know?"

"They are."

"No, but, I mean, I didn't know there was this whole other thing, with, like, names and classes and stuff. It's a different kind of…" He sighed, obviously unable to find the words he wanted. "I don't…" he started quietly. "I don't like the idea of people studying someone like…like Ma like she was some, I don't know, some animal from far away that you'd only see in a book."

"Hey," Bucky said firmly. "Nobody thinks about your ma like that."

"Don't they?" Steve asked quietly. He gestured at the pamphlet Bucky had tossed aside. "There's a whole class on trying to understand people like her." His voice was wavering a little bit.

"Well, if they do, they're wrong," Bucky said. "You know who _doesn't_ think about your ma—or you—that way?" Steve arched a curious eyebrow. "Me," Bucky said resolutely. "My ma and pop. Becky. Mrs. O'Brien." She was an elderly witch who lived in Steve's building and used to babysit him when he was little. "The Kowalskis." They were a witch and wizard who ran the diner down the street. "The guys at school, Gabe and Jacques and Jim and Monty and Dugan. Peggy doesn't. Professor Erskine doesn't." Bucky was guessing a little on that last one, but it wasn't really much of a reach. He nudged Steve's arm and smiled. "Your pop didn't."

Steve's eyes were still watery, but a small, grateful smile was on his lips.

"There's plenty more," Bucky went on. "And, you know what? The people that disagree, we can change their minds." He emphasized the word 'we'. Cause, yeah, there were some jerks out there, but Steve wasn't ever gonna have to fight them alone. "And if that doesn't work, we can always hex 'em."

Steve laughed and wiped at his watery eyes. "Thanks, Bucky," he said softly.

Bucky clapped his shoulder and nodded. "And I'm not just sayin' that. You know I mean it, right?"

Steve smiled. "I know. And I'm glad…" He trailed off thoughtfully, finally rolling around to sit up in the chair. "For eleven years, I didn't know some wizards thought any different about people without magic, and that's cause of how you and your family treated me and Ma. I didn't ever thank you for that. I didn't ever realize I needed to."

Bucky frowned. "You don't." You weren't supposed to get thanked for just…not being awful.

Steve's smile widened. "I know. That's what I'm saying. I never…" He blushed. "I'm just glad your family is the way they are and that you're who I got to grow up with," he finished quickly, his voice cracking a little.

Bucky looked down, his own throat suddenly feeling tight. He didn't know what to say to that. He shot a quick look up at Steve who was watching him with an uncertain smile, like he was hoping he hadn't said too much, and Bucky smiled back and realized he didn't have to say anything at all.

* * *

Steve was finishing his oatmeal when there was a knock on the front door of the apartment and Bucky stuck his head in. "Hey, Buck," he greeted.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky said, closing the door behind him. "Morning, Mrs. Rogers," he added as Steve's ma came into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Bucky," she replied. "Would you like some oatmeal?"

"I already had breakfast, ma'am, but thank you."

She nodded. "What are you two up to today?"

Steve shrugged. "Dunno yet." He took another bite of oatmeal, savoring the sweetness of the strawberry his ma had cut up and put on top.

Bucky slid into an empty chair. "I've been trying to talk Steve into seeing if the Peterson girls want to take a walk down by the pier."

Steve clicked his tongue in disapproval. "What would Vicki say?"

His ma raised a curious eyebrow. "Vicki? Who's Vicki?" she asked with a smile.

Bucky blushed and Steve chuckled. "Vicki's Bucky's girl," he told her. "In the year above us."

"Oh, an older woman," she mused, smiling along with Steve. Bucky's cheeks went redder.

"Shut up, Steve," he complained. "Sorry, Mrs. Rogers," he said quickly. "It's just, she's not, she's not my girl. Not really."

Steve shot Bucky a questioning eyebrow. It had sure seemed like it last time he saw them. "Did something happen?"

"Johnny Wolcott happened," Bucky said with a frown. "After the last Hogsmeade weekend."

"Oh. Sorry," Steve said, feeling bad for bringing it up.

Bucky shrugged. "We weren't really serious or anything." Maybe they weren't, but Steve knew that Bucky had really liked her.

"I'm sorry, dear," Steve's ma said, reaching across the table to pat Bucky's hand. "It's her loss."

Bucky blushed a little, but Steve saw him smile too. "Is it…Would it be alright if I asked you something, Mrs. Rogers?" he asked a little hesitantly. "About girls, I mean."

"Of course," she told him with a smile.

Steve watched the exchange curiously. Bucky had always seemed to have all the answers as far as girls went.

"How do you know, I mean, if a girl's mad at you, how can you tell? Cause I got the feeling maybe I did something to make her mad, but I didn't know what."

Mrs. Rogers nodded. "Did you ask her?"

Bucky considered. "No," he said at last. "I figured she'd just tell me." He looked across the table at Steve. "Like when Steve's mad at me, he just tells me. Usually. Sometimes he just throws things at me."

"Steve!" his ma chastised.

"Hey!" he complained to Bucky, who shrugged.

"Well, you do."

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," Steve snorted.

"Boys," his ma said.

"Sorry," they chorused.

She smiled into her coffee cup. "Getting back to your question, Bucky," she said. "Asking is always a good place to start. It shows her you care about how she feels. But you don't want to just throw out a 'What's wrong?'. You need to be genuine, first of all. Don't ask if you don't mean it. And you should be more specific with your question."

"But I don't know what I did," Bucky said.

"No, I know, but you could say something like, 'You seem upset. Did I do something wrong?' That's showing that you're paying attention to her and that you're willing to take responsibility for making a mistake." She took a drink of coffee. "Only ask that, though, if you're reasonably certain that it's you she's upset with. You do that too much otherwise and it comes off rather needy. If you're not sure what it is that's bothering her, you could just go with, 'You seem upset. How can I help?'"

Bucky nodded. "And if it is something I did?"

"Then apologize and mean it. A simple apology will usually go a long way." She smiled. "Talking to girls really isn't that different than talking to anybody else."

Bucky nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Rogers."

"You're welcome, Bucky." She looked over at Steve. "You don't need to look so surprised, Steve," she told him with a smile. "I am a girl, after all. I know a few things about what we think."

Steve blushed, embarrassed that she'd caught him out. She always knew what he was thinking (how _did_ she do that?!). He knew his ma was a girl, it was just weird that she knew about relationships and stuff. Cause she wasn't _just_ a girl. She was his ma.

"No, I, I know that," he stammered. He could just feel Bucky smirking at him.

"It's just weird for you that I know things like that?" she finished for him. "Because it means you have to accept the fact that I've dated people before."

"Ma!" he whined, feeling the heat rush to his cheeks as he went even redder.

"Because I _did_ date your father, you know." She smiled coyly and took another sip of her coffee. "Some other boys too," she added with a nonchalant shrug, and Steve groaned and wished he could just slide under the table.

"Well," she said. "If you two still aren't sure what you're doing today, I have some errands to run, and you're welcome to tag along. I could use a couple of strong boys to help carry things."

"We can do that, Ma," Steve said, relieved for the change of subject.

"Sure, Mrs. Rogers. We'd be happy to," Bucky agreed.

She smiled. "Let me just go get my purse. Wash your bowl, Steve," she added, rising from the table.

Steve washed his dishes and his ma's coffee cup and went to get his shoes. They were starting to pinch his toes, but he hadn't wanted to ask for new ones yet. They were going to have to get him more school supplies soon, and between that and groceries and all the bills, he knew money was tight. And after an hour or so they stopped hurting anyway. (But, boy, did his feet smart at the end of the day!)

Their first stop was the pharmacy to refill Steve's prescriptions. Steve had known the names of all his medications off by heart for a while now, so he recognized when his ma added something else to the order—maybe it was something for her, but he decided he'd wait and ask when they weren't in company.

They went to the grocery store after that, and it was here that the boys came in useful—when they left, Bucky had a bag of potatoes slung over one shoulder and a box with flour and sugar tucked under his other arm. Steve's arms were loaded with bags of vegetables and rice, and he had to strain a little to see over them. They returned to the apartment to drop off their cargo, helped his ma divide it all up and put it in smaller boxes, and carried half of it back out again. Their next stop was the church, where they handed the food over to Mrs. McKenzie in the soup kitchen. They unloaded everything they had brought in and placed it on shelves under her instructions. Then they washed dishes for a while while Steve's ma helped the other ladies start preparations for the meal later in the day. They were both considerably wetter by the time they were done—the sinks were large and some of the bigger dishes were cumbersome, but most of the water had come from 'accidentally' splashing each other, though they'd stopped short of using the pots to dump water on one another. Time and a place and all that.

Mrs. McKenzie thanked them and patted Steve on the head like she always did—Bucky kept himself just out of reach—and handed Steve's ma several envelopes to take to the post office. (Steve knew one of the envelopes contained reimbursement for the groceries, but he also knew it wasn't enough—he'd asked once why she always brought more than she was paid for, and his ma had just told him that people needed help sometimes, and an extra dollar in her pocket wasn't worth someone not getting fed.)

The post office came after that, and they dropped off the letters and said hi to Bucky's ma behind the counter. Becky popped her head up from behind the counter to greet them. "Hi, Jay!" she exclaimed. "Hi, Steve and Mrs. Rogers!"

"Hey, Becky," Bucky said. "What're you doing back there?"

"Ma's letting me put mail in the boxes," she said proudly, brandishing a basket of letters. Becky was nine—free to come and go as Steve and Bucky were, but Mrs. Barnes had brought her along to work until she'd been old enough to run around on her own, and Becky liked coming back to help and visit, and she usually came away with a piece of candy from old Mr. Mallard by the end of the day.

They took their leave and made their way to the next stop at the Salvation Army. Steve was directed to a rack to select two new pairs of pants—he knew to get them a little big so he could grow into them. He could always wear his belt a little tighter and roll up the cuffs. It was a little embarrassing, shopping for clothes in front of his friend, but Bucky amused himself by finding larger and larger pairs of trousers and cajoling Steve into trying them on, and soon Steve was laughing too. The last pair he found was big enough that they could each fit into one of the legs.

"Now, that's the sort of thing one should have a camera for," His ma said from behind them. She looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh, and Steve blushed and he and Bucky hurried to scramble out of the pants and ended up falling over, and then she _did_ laugh. "I know I told you to get them a bit big, but I hope you found something that fits a little better than that," she added as they got to their feet.

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said, picking up two folded pairs he'd set aside. Bucky picked up and re-folded the giant pants.

"Yes, I think these will work," she said after examining them. She draped them over her arm. "Let's see about a pair of shoes now."

"Oh, I'm alright, Ma," Steve said. "My shoes are—"

"Your shoes are too small," she interrupted. She arched an eyebrow as he opened his mouth to protest. "You don't think I've seen the way you walk?" she asked. "We'd have to cut holes in the toes for you to make it through another year at school in those." She smiled. "And that rather defeats the purpose of wearing a shoe."

They found a pair that were slightly scuffed and a little too big, but they were cheap. It was an odd feeling, going from having not enough room for his feet to too much. He felt like he was slipping around inside the shoes.

"I think I know how to fix that," Bucky said as he put the shoes back in the box.

"How?" Steve wondered. Was there some kind of spell to shrink shoes?

"I'll show you when we get home," Bucky told him.

They took the shoes and the pants to Mr. Garcia at the front of the store, who was talking quietly with Steve's ma. His eyes were watery, like he was trying not to cry, but he was smiling. He rang up the pants, and put them in a bag, shaking his head when Steve's ma pointed out that he forgot to ring up the shoes.

"You will not buy them," he said, shaking his head. He handed the box to Steve. "For Rosa," he said, looking back at Steve's ma.

"Oh, Mr. Garcia, we—" his ma began.

"I insist, Señora," he told her.

She looked at the shoebox and then back up at Mr. Garcia and smiled. "Thank you," she said warmly.

"Via con Dios," he told her, waving them out of the shop.

"What was that about?" Steve asked his ma once they were outside. "Was Mr. Garcia upset?"

Steve's ma hemmed a little, as if unsure of where to start, and Bucky took that as his cue to become very interested in an advertisement in the next window and pretend like he couldn't hear them.

"His little girl, Rosa, is sick," she told him quietly. "Mr. Garcia couldn't buy the medicine she needed…"

"And that was what you got at the pharmacy this morning," Steve finished, comprehension dawning. His ma nodded and Steve smiled. "That was real nice of you, Ma." She was always doing things like that, helping out people in the neighborhood, but he knew she didn't like calling attention to it. "That was real nice of Mr. Garcia, too, to let us take these shoes," he added, moving the conversation on so she wouldn't be embarrassed.

"He's a very kind man," she agreed.

"Bucky figures he can help me make 'em fit a little better when we get home," he added, letting Bucky know he could rejoin the conversation.

"Well, that's very good of you, dear," his ma said. "We can't have him sliding around in these until they fit his feet."

Bucky grinned and Steve scowled. "You saw that?"

"I'm your mother, dear, I see everything." She looped an arm over each boy's shoulder. "I think we have one more stop to make before we go home."

The last stop turned out to be Mr. and Mrs. Kowalski's diner. Steve thought maybe they were going to drop something off, so he was surprised when his ma asked for a table. "Are we eating lunch here?" Steve asked. That would be quite the treat.

She nodded, slipping into one side of the booth. "It's been a busy morning, and I don't really want to make lunch. Bucky, are you going to sit down?" Steve had jumped up into the booth across from her when she nodded, but Bucky was still standing by the table a little awkwardly.

"Well, I just thought I would…" he gestured back towards the door.

"Nonsense, you should eat with us," his ma said.

Bucky blushed. "I didn't bring any money," he said quietly.

Steve's ma gave Bucky a look that Steve got all the time—a look that somehow said she thought you were being an idiot without making you feel bad about it at all. "I came in here fully intending to buy your lunch, dear. If it makes you feel better, you can look at it as payment for helping me out this morning, but you're going to sit down and you're going to eat with us."

"Yes, Ma'am," Bucky replied, and he slipped into the booth next to Steve. He smiled. "Thank you."

Mrs. Kowalski came bustling over to greet them and take their orders, and Steve got another pat on the head. Seriously, did no one know he was thirteen? With both of them sitting down, he didn't look _that_ much shorter than Bucky, who, he noted, did not receive the same condescending pat.

"Is your building still standing after having a month of these two at home, Sarah?" she asked, chuckling.

"Barely, Lena," Steve's ma said with a smile. "But it's a chaos worth having. It's awfully quiet when they're gone."

"My mother said the same when my brothers and I would come back from school," Mrs. Kowalski said. "I can only imagine what that must be like." The Kowalski's children were too young for school—Hogwarts or anywhere else—but Steve imagined three-year-old triplets did not make for a quiet home. "What can I get you all to drink?" They were a bit later than the usual lunch crowd today, and so after they placed their drink orders, Mrs. Kowalski glanced surreptitiously around the empty diner and pulled a wand from the pocket of her apron, conjuring three glasses and filling them.

"Thank you, Mrs. Kowalski," Steve and Bucky said.

"You're welcome, boys. Learn anything interesting at school this year?" She was always interested in hearing about Hogwarts—she'd gone to an American magical school somewhere upstate.

They told her about some of the more interesting spells they'd learned, as well as their recent discovery of the existence of house elves. "Do you have house elves here, Mrs. Kowalski?" Steve wondered, looking in the direction of the kitchen.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not that we couldn't do with one or two with the way the dishes pile up, but I don't think we'll ever be able to afford one."

"Are they expensive?" Bucky asked.

Mrs. Kowalski nodded. "A school like Hogwarts can afford several, but outside of your institutions, you only ever find them working for the rich and famous." She turned to Mrs. Rogers with a grin. "That's why the rest of us have children."

Mrs. Rogers laughed and Mrs. Kowalski returned to the kitchen. "I did notice you two were working awfully hard at the church," she told them. "Really getting into that dishwashing."

"Well, you know, some of the pots were really dirty," Bucky said innocently, tactfully not mentioning that Steve had initiated the water fight. "We had to really get in there and scrub."

"Mm-hmm," she said, and Steve knew she knew. She steered the conversation back to school and very subtly around to Vicki, drawing out a little bit more of what Bucky liked about her and how he thought they might have fallen apart. Steve marveled at her tact—he was always much more straightforward—and he wondered if treating them to lunch wasn't a way of trying to cheer Bucky up. His suspicions were confirmed at the end of the meal when she ordered a slice of chocolate pie for the three of them to split. Pie was a treat no matter which way you cut it, but chocolate was Bucky's favorite. (His ma's favorite was lemon and Steve's was strawberry, but pie was pie, and Steve wasn't complaining.)

They went home after lunch, and Bucky's trick for making Steve's shoes fit his feet turned out not to be one of those household spells Mrs. Barnes had been trying to teach them, but crumpling up some bits of old newspapers and stuffing them down in the toes. It worked surprisingly well. His feet didn't slide, but the newspapers had some give to them, so they didn't push on his toes.

Bucky went home and Steve spent the rest of the afternoon helping his ma with the laundry. "Hey, Ma?" he asked.

"Yes, Steve?"

"Did you and Dad ever have, you know, fights and stuff? Just cause, I mean, you sound like you know how to fix them," he explained.

His ma smiled. "Everyone fights sometimes, Steve. Your father and I _did_ have our disagreements from time to time, and when you're that close to someone, you certainly know how to upset them, but you also get pretty good at patching things up. You learn how to forgive and how to compromise because the other person is important enough to you to make the work worth it."

Steve nodded. He often wondered what it would be like if his father was still alive. It was nice to know that he and Ma wouldn't have been one of those couples that fought all the time.

"Come here, sweetie," she said, and she grabbed his hand and pulled him over into a hug, planting a kiss on top of his head. She often did that when they talked about his father. He never knew if it was him or herself she was comforting when she did that. Maybe both. He hugged her back.

"You know a lot of stuff, Ma," he said, smiling when she laughed.

"Thank you, Steve. I do try. Now," she said, ruffling his hair. He didn't mind when she did it. "Go and put all your socks away and we'll listen to the rest of the baseball game while we make dinner."


	9. Ghosts

Every time they went to school, Bucky wondered in the back of his head about the mechanics of magical transport. The Hogwarts Express would pull into Grand Central Station at eight in the morning, and they had five minutes to get all their stuff on board before it took off again, pulling into King's Cross Station in London three hours later. He knew his geography well enough to know that New York and London were a hell of a lot farther than three hours apart, but how the train managed the Atlantic crossing that fast remained a mystery. He also wondered why it didn't keep up that same speed once it hit Britain—it could cross an ocean in three hours, but the British countryside took six.

The length of the journey always meant that any students coming from the States were well and truly tuckered out by the time they pulled into Hogsmeade. Gabe had fallen asleep with his face plastered against the window, and Steve had at some point moved on to the floor and fallen asleep there, and whether he had rolled on his own or the momentum of the train had moved him, he was now under the seat, still asleep and snoring. (Which was great. He'd been away from home for all of a day and his allergies were already acting up. Although, it had to be awfully dusty under the seat. Maybe he'd clear up once he got out in the air.)

"Hey, c'mon, we're here," Bucky said, slapping Gabe's shoulder. Gabe sat up with a start. "Steve, come on, man, we're here." He nudged him with his foot. "I'm not carrying you off the train, Steve, get up."

"Wha—" Steve mumbled. "Ow!" He'd tried to sit up and whacked his head on the underside of the seat.

"That's what you get for sleeping under the chairs, punk," Bucky said with a smirk, holding out a hand to pull him up.

"I wasn't sleeping," Steve protested, climbing up on the seat to pull down his coat and backpack.

"I'm not even gonna dignify that with a response," Bucky replied, rolling his eyes and pulling down his own bag. "Let's go find a carriage."

They clambered off the train and into a carriage with Gabe and Jacques who were chattering excitedly in French. "When do you think the first Hogsmeade weekend is?" Steve asked, peering through the waning light at the village around them. This year they were allowed to go down to the village on approved weekends, and Bucky knew Steve was excited. Hell, he was too. He'd only ever been places where wizards lived mixed in with non-magical people. He wondered what a completely magical town was like.

"Dunno. I mean, it looks kinda normal right now. But the whole place has gotta be like Thornbarrow Row." Thornbarrow Row was a long, hidden alley in Queens that was where all the wizarding shops were. It's where he and Steve got all their school supplies. "But just, more, right?"

"Yeah," Steve agreed, looking back as the village disappeared behind them. Torches were starting to come on in brackets outside the buildings. "I still think it's weird they don't have electricity."

They arrived at the castle and the smell of the welcome feast came drifting out to meet them. "What do you think pulls these things?" Steve asked, looking curiously back at the carriage as he pulled on his coat.

"Magic?" Bucky suggested, and Steve gave him a _look_. "Maybe there's a spell that draws 'em up to the castle or something."

"Hmm," Steve considered, following Bucky inside. The Great Hall was buzzing with the excited conversations of people greeting their friends. It was warm and lively, and any lingering sleepiness from the journey was woken up by the vibrant chatter and the mouth-watering smells of dinner.

Bucky noticed Peggy waving at Steve from the Gryffindor table and Steve blushing a little as he waved back. Bucky waved to Peggy and nudged Steve with his elbow. "This could be your year to make your move, pal," he told him, nodding in Peggy's direction.

Steve went several shades redder. "I…I don't, I mean, I don't know…"

Bucky laughed and patted his shoulder. The Sorting went quickly, and they cheered for all the new additions to the Hufflepuff table before getting down to the business of dinner. Tuna sandwiches on the train seemed like a very long time ago, and there wasn't much talking at their end of the table for a while as everyone ate.

After the announcements, they were sent off to their dorms where their luggage had magically appeared and was waiting for them to unpack it. Jacques, to no one's surprise, was nowhere to be seen, and it didn't surprise anyone when he turned up with leftovers from dinner which they all devoured, even though half an hour ago they'd been sure they couldn't eat another bite.

"You think the house elves bring these up from the station?" Steve wondered, pulling clothes out of his trunk.

Bucky considered. "I don't know. It would take, like, two of them to carry one trunk. They're not very big."

Steve nodded. "And they're probably busy working on dinner. Maybe they apparate them here from the station or something."

"I wonder what house elves do on their time off," Bucky mused. "Like, when we're not here and there's no one to cook for."

Steve shrugged. "Maybe they go to the beach," he suggested, and Bucky laughed at the mental image of Winston in his dish towel wearing sunglasses and reclining in a beach chair somewhere.

The next morning, they got their schedules at breakfast and were excited to see that they would be starting off first thing with Care of Magical Creatures.

"Cool!" Bucky exclaimed. "What do you think we'll see?"

"I don't know. I hope there's a dragon," Steve said excitedly.

"Morning, chaps," Monty said from behind them. "You've got Magical creatures as well? It's unlikely we'll have a dragon first lesson. That seems like more of a Seventh-Year creature. _If_ there'll be one at all. They are illegal, you know."

"I know," Steve said. "But how cool would that be?"

The Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs traipsed down out into the grounds where Professor Ellerton was waiting for them. "Move along, ladies and gents, move along!" he called. "Let's not waste time getting started."

"Is that a dog?" Steve asked, going up on his toes to see into the pen behind the professor. He sounded disappointed, and Bucky couldn't say he blamed him—they'd seen dogs before.

"Right," Ellerton said, clapping his hands together once. "Everyone got their bestiaries? Good. Now, who can tell me what this is?"

Jacques raised a hand. "Est-ce un chien de cimetière?"

Ellerton's eyebrows drew together in confusion.

"Where's Gabe when you need him?" Bucky whispered to Steve, who grinned. He knew enough French to know Jacques had said something about a dog, but that much was obvious anyway.

Monty put a hand in the air. "He asked if it was a graveyard dog, Professor."

"Oh! Yes. Yes, it is. Five points for Hufflepuff, Mr. Dernier. Come in closer and have a look, everyone," he said, beckoning them forward.

They pressed up against the pen. Inside sat a large, black dog, bigger than any dog Bucky had ever seen. "It's almost as big as a horse," Steve said. Its fur was shaggy, but also kind of ethereal, like wisps of smoke made solid. Its eyes glowed red, which, along with the huge teeth and very noticeable claws, would have made it one of the scariest things Bucky had ever seen, if not for the fact that it was lolling on its back in the grass with its tongue hanging out, clearly relaxed and enjoying the sunshine.

"Don't be shy," Ellerton told them. "It's quite harmless. Now, as Mr. Dernier said, this is a graveyard dog, and more specifically, a Church Grim."

Bucky heard a collective gasp from about half the class who backed up rapidly from the pen. Professor Ellerton chuckled. "I can see several of you already know what a Grim is. Anyone care to offer an explanation for the rest of the group?"

"It's a death omen," Monty said nervously.

"Very good, Mr. Falsworth. Five points to Slytherin. There are several variations of your spectral Black Dogs, generally referred to as Grims. Most of them are quite dangerous, but the Church Grim is rather unique among its fellows. They keep away thieves, evil spirits, or anything that threatens the parish. They are only dangerous to those intending harm, and seeing a Church Grim—if your intentions are innocent—is no more a portent of death than seeing any other dog."

Bucky eyed the dog curiously as the rest of the group came back. He certainly wouldn't want to meet it on a dark night, but it didn't look that bad. "How did it get here, sir?" he asked. "If it's supposed to be guarding a church?"

"A good question, Mr. Barnes," Ellerton said. "Church Grims are always tied to a specific churchyard—this one is from St. Catherine's about an hour north of here. Church Grims are born when a church is being built and a dog—any sort of dog—is buried beneath the foundations."

"So, it's a ghost dog?" Steve asked.

"Of a sort, yes. You'll notice the fur," he said, pointing at the dog. "But they are more solid than your typical ghost. You can touch him, if you like." He clicked his tongue and the dog trotted towards the fence, sniffing curiously at the students. It sniffed at Steve's hand then licked his face with its giant tongue, making several of the class yelp in surprise and then laugh.

"That's really cold!" Steve exclaimed, using his sleeve to wipe copious amounts of drool from his face.

"Well, it is a ghost," Bucky said, laughing. He stuck out his hand to scratch the dog behind the ears and it whimpered happily, letting its long tongue hang out. It felt…weird. It felt like fur, thick and soft, but it also felt like smoke and kind of like water at the same time. It was very cold.

Steve patted the dog's side, and pulled his face back as it turned to him so it wouldn't lick him again. "Hey, boy," he said. "Does he have a name?" he asked Professor Ellerton. He and Bucky pulled back as other students moved forward to pet it (although, Monty was still hanging back).

"His name is Peregrine. He's been guarding St. Catherine's for seven hundred and thirty-seven years."

"Wow."

Ellerton nodded. "To finish answering Mr. Barnes' question, Church Grims normally cannot travel outside the bounds of the church grounds. However, they're kind enough there to let me borrow him for lessons, and if you remove one of the bones from where the dog was buried and say the right spells over it, it allows the dog to temporarily travel wherever the bone is taken. He has to back at the church by nightfall."

They spent the rest of the lesson taking notes and petting the dog, and were assigned the chapter on Grims for homework.

"That was pretty cool," Steve said as they walked back up to the castle, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

Bucky looked down at him suspiciously. Thankfully, his allergies hadn't been overly aggravated by the dust under the train seats, but he had started sounding stuffy again. And his breath was starting to wheeze as they walked up the hill. "I think you're allergic to Grims," Bucky said.

Steve drew in a deep breath, sniffing and wiping his nose again. "Yeah, maybe," he agreed. His eyes were red and starting to water. Bucky stopped to look him over and Steve rolled his eyes. "It's fur allergy, Bucky. I'm fine where it licked me." And that appeared to be true. He wasn't breaking out anywhere on his face or hands where the dog had licked him.

"Well, that's the kind that keeps you from breathing, so it's still not good. Come on, we should go to the infirmary before next class."

"We'll be late to Potions," Steve complained.

"I'm sure Erskine would rather have you late and breathing than passed out and on time."

Steve sighed. "Yeah, alright." He was definitely starting to wheeze now.

"It's dead," Bucky said, thinking back to the dog and the fur that wasn't really fur. "How can you even be allergic to something dead?"

"I don't know," Steve snapped, and Bucky regretted the comment. He knew Steve hated being allergic to everything. It made him feel pathetic.

"Sorry," he said. "And, hey, it's not near as bad as it was with the Mandrakes. Nurse Rains can give you a pill or a potion or something and you'll be fine." He'd been out of commission for a couple of days after the Mandrake plant—he'd actually stopped breathing at one point, and he'd thrown up a lot. This was much better.

"I guess," Steve agreed. He looked thoughtful for a minute, then smirked. "At least I didn't get bitten by a basilisk," he said.

* * *

"Guys! You guys! You _guys_!" Steve turned around to see Gabe barreling down the corridor towards him and Bucky. "Did you hear what happened?"

"What?" Steve asked, his thoughts jumping to Grindelwald and some new awful thing.

Gabe paused, catching his breath. "So, last night?" He stopped and looked around, as if unsure he should be saying anything. "Professor Binns _died_!"

"What?!" Bucky exclaimed.

Steve's mouth was hanging open, shocked. "He's dead?"

"Yeah," Gabe said. "But that's not all. So, we had History of Magic first thing this morning, right—"

"Your sub told you what happened?" Steve guessed.

"No," Gabe said. "Binns was…Well, he was still there."

"You mean he died in his classroom?" Bucky asked. Steve's eyes widened in horror.

"No, no," Gabe corrected. "I don't know where he died. I don't mean, like, his body was in the room. No, his ghost was there. Like, teaching the lesson and everything."

Steve's eyebrows wrinkled in confusion. He looked up at Bucky, who looked just as skeptical. "His _ghost_ was teaching the lesson?" Steve clarified.

"Yeah," Gabe replied. "He just sort of floated through the blackboard and started teaching. Like everything was normal. He never actually said anything about being a ghost. Jim and I were talking to Eileen at the next table, and we think maybe he doesn't know he's dead."

"How do you not know you're dead?" Bucky wondered. Steve was just as curious to find out the answer to that too.

Gabe shrugged. "Well, I mean, he was really old. What if he fell asleep and died but then his ghost just thought he was getting up in the morning?"

"I don't know…" Bucky said.

Gabe rolled his eyes. "I mean, come on! How are you gonna die and not say _anything_ about it? Like, 'Good morning, class. I'm dead, by the way. Don't let that alarm you.' But, no, nothing. Just kept going right on with the Goblin Wars from last week."

Steve considered. "I mean," he said at last. "Binns doesn't…didn't ever really seem to notice much. Like that time in class when Dugan was messing around and turned his textbook into a parrot? If anyone was going to die and not notice, it'd kind of have to be him."

Bucky nodded in agreement. "Fair point. We've got him after lunch, so I guess we'll see then. Do a lot of people know?" he asked Gabe.

Gabe shrugged again. "Dunno. I mean, I'm pretty sure now that class is over, everyone's telling whoever they can find."

"Do you think he'll keep teaching?" Steve wondered. "Can you even have a ghost for a teacher?"

"I guess we'll find out," Bucky said.

By the time they got to lunch, news of Binns' death had definitely spread. Steve half-expected Phillips, or maybe even the headmaster, to get up and say something, but no one did. Maybe they were still trying to figure out what to do about it.

For the first time since Steve could remember, the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were lined up outside Binn's classroom eagerly—it should have been an interesting subject, but it was not. No one was ever really eager for it. They filed into the empty classroom, craning their necks curiously to look around, and they all let out a gasp of surprise as Professor Binns appeared suddenly out of the blackboard at the front of the room, hovering a foot or so off the ground.

"Good afternoon, class. Let's continue where we left off last week with the Prussian Treaty of 1563," he said, his voice dry and monotone as ever. He launched straight into the lecture as the students shot confused glances at one another.

After a couple of minutes, Bucky raised his hand. "Excuse me, Professor Binns?"

Binns paused his speech, looking up. "Yes? What is it, Barnett?"

"Um," Bucky started. Steve wondered if he was distracted by the fact that he could see the writing on the board through Binns' head. Steve was. "Um, are you…Are you feeling alright, sir?" he asked.

Binns drew two translucent eyebrows together. "I'm fine, thank you. Why is it that people keep asking? It's hardly the sort of thing one should interrupt class for."

"Please, sir," Peggy said, raising her hand. "It's just that…you're not looking very well. Are you sure you're alright?"

"I am perfectly well, Miss Cartwright," he huffed. "Thank you for your concern. Now, let us return our attention to the arrival of the delegation from Croatia…"

"Guess Gabe was right," Steve said softly.

Bucky's face was scrunched up in confusion. "I just…I don't get how you can die and not know it?"

Steve wondered the same thing. It just didn't seem like the kind of thing you would miss.

"Reckon he knows he's dead and just doesn't care?" Dugan leaned over and suggested. He had a point. Most ghosts seemed pretty unperturbed with the fact that they weren't alive anymore.

"On his first day being dead, though?" Bucky pressed. "Surely no one could be that calm that quickly."

Dugan shrugged. "Well, he seems pretty cool with it."

"I've never seen Binns bothered by anything," Steve pointed out. He looked over at Dugan, who grinned at the memory of the parrot incident. If Binns even noticed when things happened out of the ordinary, he just got a little huffy and then carried on.

Bucky shook his head. "It's just weird. Does it bother anyone else that you can see through him?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "Although, if you turn your head like this, he kinda catches the glare from the window and he's too shiny to see through."

Dugan and Bucky immediately tried it, and Peggy shook her head. "Seeing as death hasn't slowed him down, I'd pay attention if I was you lot," she said. "This is probably going to be on the test."

* * *

There weren't a lot of people Steve didn't like. He really did try to get along with everyone, to see the best in people. Even bullies and stuff, he'd get angry with in the moment but was otherwise pretty indifferent towards—he didn't _like_ them, sure, but he didn't necessarily dislike them either. But Ethan Green…Ethan definitely made the list of people Steve didn't like.

It would wear on anyone, really, the snide, whispered comments and insults, day after day. 'Accidentally' tripping him or bumping into him and knocking him over. Punches and jabs and kicks when he thought he could get away with it. Not that other people didn't pick on Steve—he could take it. But, no matter how much he told Bucky that it didn't hurt, the stuff Ethan said, well, it _did_ hurt a little. He tried to be the bigger person and tune it out. Usually, he managed it.

His ma never liked it when he fought. That was usually enough of a deterrent when people picked at him. (Now, fighting _back_, his ma didn't mind. He tried not to start fights, but if someone else threw the first punch, all bets were off.) But she'd also taught him to stick up for what was right. And he'd only heard the slurs that wizards used for a couple of years, but he'd heard a lot of other ones on the streets of Brooklyn. Steve figured even his ma would have taken a swing after hearing the one Ethan threw at Gabe.

So, yeah, Steve had definitely started this fight. In his defense, though, if he hadn't, about four other people would've. Gabe being the primary one, obviously. Dugan and Peggy wouldn't've been too far behind, and Jacques may not have known what the word meant, but there was no mistaking the tone. But Steve was standing closer to Ethan than the rest of them, so the first punch was his. First blood, too. He'd taken Peggy's punching advice from last term to heart, and thrown the entirety of his little body into the punch. It had been _very_ satisfying when Ethan hit the ground.

Less satisfying was what had come after. Ethan may have been the only one to say anything, but he hadn't been alone. His friends had jumped in, as had Peggy and Dugan and Gabe and Jacques, who'd all been in the process of lunging at Ethan anyway. Fists and feet and insults were flying, and much later, when his head had stopped pounding, Steve was deeply impressed by the variety in Peggy's vocabulary of swear words.

He was less impressed by Ethan, who had gotten back up off the ground and who seemed not to have much variety to his insults beyond calling him a dirty little half-breed or a mutt. He hated that, but he heard it a lot. Surely he could mix up his repertoire.

He'd gotten a pretty good hit in when he put Ethan on the ground, but Ethan was bigger and had regained the upper hand. Chaos was reigning around them, but the fighters had mostly paired off and Ethan had ended up with Steve. This time, Ethan put him on the ground. And then again, and another time after that. Steve bounced up, fists raised, every time.

Ethan snorted disdainfully. "You just don't know when to give up, do you?" he sneered, blocking the punch Steve had thrown.

Steve dashed a hand across his eyebrow, wiping away the blood dripping into his eye. "I could do this all day." Yeah, it hurt, but if you went down and you stayed down, they'd never let you get back up.

He managed to get in a good punch to Ethan's gut before Ethan grabbed the back of his shirt and slammed him into the ground, then they all heard a loud bang and the angry voice of Professor Phillips, which stopped the fight abruptly. The two sides drew apart, glaring daggers at each other, and both started yelling when Phillips demanded an explanation. Another loud bang silenced everyone.

By the time things were sorted out, everyone had detention—some more than others. Dugan was the only one who didn't really look that much worse for the wear. All of them were covered in dirt. Peggy had a split lip and busted knuckles on both hands. The side of Jacques' face was covered in blood and he was cradling one of his wrists against his chest. Gabe was limping. Everyone was moving stiff and sore, bruises already forming on exposed patches of skin. Steve staggered when he started walking and found himself being supported up the stairs by Dugan, which was probably good. Everything kept spinning, and he was pretty sure he fell a few times, Dugan's large hand on his shoulder the only thing keeping him from going down. He was also having trouble seeing—blood was trickling into his left eye from somewhere on his head. He wasn't sure quite how many flights of stairs he made it up before he passed out, dimly thinking that once Bucky got back from Quidditch practice, he was gonna be _pissed_.

When he woke up, Steve's first conscious thought was that he wished he hadn't. Something seemed to have crawled inside of his head while he'd been asleep and was now pounding against the inside of his skull trying to get out. With a hammer. Possibly several hammers. And maybe a bulldozer.

His second thought was that as much as he hated Ethan Green, in this moment, Timothy Dugan wasn't far behind—Dugan had caught his eyes opening, grinned and boomed, "Hey, there you are!" and clapped him heavily on the shoulder.

"Aaaaah," Steve moaned, curling into a ball and grabbing his head with both hands to keep it from falling off.

He heard a slap and a familiar voice snap, "He's got a concussion, you idiot! What's the matter with you?!"

Hands rested on his shoulders and Steve squinted one eye open to see Bucky's worried face swim into view. "Steve? You okay?"

"Yeah," Steve whispered, allowing the second eye to open. His head did not appear to be in danger of coming off, so that was good.

"Sorry," Dugan cringed, looking mortified.

"It's alright," Steve said. At least Dugan's enthusiasm had been because he was happy to see him alive, so, you know, that was nice.

"Is everybody okay?" Steve asked, looking around. Peggy, while still filthy, looked back to normal, though she was massaging one hand. Dugan looked fine and Gabe was standing up, so he seemed okay. He didn't see Jacques.

Bucky shook his head in exasperation, but Peggy smiled and nodded. "We're all fine. Nurse Rains is just finishing up with Jacques. She keeps trying to chuck us all out, but we wanted to wait until you woke up to make sure you were alright."

Steve nodded, blushing a little. Apparently, he'd been the only one to pass out.

Dugan grinned, as if he knew what Steve was thinking. He hooked a thumb back in the direction of the rest of the ward. "Rains wants you to stay here a little longer, but three of the other guys are in overnight. I'd say we won that one."

Steve did have to smile at that. Dugan tipped his hat at him and headed for the door, followed by Peggy, who gave him a smile that made his stomach do a flip that had nothing to do with the nausea the concussion was causing.

Gabe lingered at the foot of the bed for a moment. "Hey, uh, thanks, man," he said a little awkwardly. "I, uh…that was real solid, what you did."

Steve smiled and gave him a tiny nod in deference to his pounding head. Gabe was more than capable of handling his own fights, but he was Steve's friend, and Steve was gonna have his back.

Gabe smiled and nodded back, and headed across the ward to check on Jacques. Steve sighed and shut his eyes for a second, leaning back on his pillow. Bucky was still there when he opened them, although he'd moved to sit on the mattress instead of standing beside the bed. Steve sighed again. "Can you wait to yell at me until my head stops hurting?" he asked quietly. He didn't think he could take it right now.

Bucky's eyebrows drew together in bemusement. "I'm not gonna yell at you."

Steve snorted, then wished he hadn't, because that hurt too. "You always yell at me when I do something stupid."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. One side of his mouth quirked up in a smile. "This wasn't stupid, Steve."

Steve squinted up at him suspiciously.

Bucky shook his head. "Gabe told me what Ethan called him," he said, glaring over at the other side of the ward where Steve assumed Ethan was. "I would have done the same thing."

Maybe it was the concussion, but Steve still wasn't tracking Bucky's logic. Most of the fights Steve ended up in—when he wasn't the initial target—were because he was trying to stick up for someone else. He'd gotten yelled at for those. Not that Bucky ever said he was wrong for doing it—the yelling was for going after people who were capable of snapping him in half without Bucky around to back him up. He wasn't really sure how this was different, but he wasn't going to argue.

Bucky looked down at him sympathetically. "How are you really feeling?" he asked.

Steve sighed. "Is my skull still in one piece?" he asked. It sure didn't feel like it right now.

Bucky grimaced, reached out like he was going to pat the side of Steve's head, then pulled his hand back. "Yeah. You took a pretty good hit, though."

"Did she say how long I have to stay?"

Bucky lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "She said she'd come back when you woke up to give you some more potion, and she thinks once that kicks in you should be good to go." Bucky looked skeptical of this plan, and Steve smiled to himself. This was not Steve's first concussion, and if Bucky had his way, Steve would take the potion and then spend the next three days lying in a dark, quiet room somewhere just in case.

"Great," Steve said. He was eager for his head to stop hurting, and was encouraged by the thought of not needing to spend the night in the infirmary. He did enough of that already.

Bucky nodded, still looking a little unconvinced. He grinned as something occurred to him. "I'll bet things are awkward in the Gryffindor common room tonight," he said.

Steve arched a questioning eyebrow.

Bucky nodded toward the door. "Peggy and Dugan are in the same house as a bunch of those guys. I mean, I don't know that it would surprise anybody the amount of damage Dugan did, but Peggy gave Ronald Billings a concussion. And, yeah, Rains already fixed it so you can't tell, but people talk, and Ethan's gonna have to deal with everybody knowing that a tiny little asthmatic punk knocked him down and broke his nose."

Steve's mouth dropped open. "I broke his nose?"

Bucky's grin widened. "Yeah, you did!" He was beaming, his voice tinged with pride.

Steve supposed he should feel bad about that, but he couldn't help smiling. That was…He wasn't gonna lie, that was kind of awesome.

* * *

The school was buzzing with the news of what everyone was calling 'The Ghost Ship'. It was all over the Daily Prophet, and the story had even reached the non-magical newspapers as well. Monday morning, off the coast of Spain, a ship had drifted into the harbor. It was the _Calliope_, an American cargo ship that was supposed to have docked in France a week ago. Everyone on the boat was dead, without a mark on them. The only thing out of the ordinary—aside from the entire crew being dead—was a silver lapel pin shaped like an octopus with a bit of black cloth attached, like it had been torn from a shirt collar.

"Why would Grindelwald attack a cargo ship?" Jim asked, spreading out a newspaper on the grass in front of him. The moving photograph on top showed the _Calliope_, bobbing up and down in the swell of the tide.

"He must have been looking for something," Steve said, leaning over to look.

"But what?" Bucky asked. While it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for Grindelwald to kill that many people just for the hell of it—especially after the war in Europe had started—there always seemed to be some sort of reasoning behind his targets. Smaller groups of people, he and his followers killed for fun, but with big groups like this, he was usually after something. Like in Holland last year.

"They're still trying to figure that out," Peggy said, her eyes searching her own paper. "The cargo seemed undisturbed, and they're still going through the ship's manifest."

"Are any people missing?" Steve asked. "Maybe he was after a person and not a thing."

"No," Jim said, pointing further down the page. "Says here the whole crew was accounted for."

"Ce n'était pas Grindelwald," Jacques said quietly. His shoulders were turned so he could see Jim's paper, but his eyes were far away.

"How do you know?" Monty asked.

"Who else could it have been?" Dugan asked at the same time. Gabe was looking at Jacques with his eyebrows furrowed in concern.

Jacques tapped the bottom of the page, where a small photograph showed the octopus pin. "Cette," he said softly. "Je l'ai déjà vu. C'est le symbole d'Hydra."

"Hydra?" Steve asked. "That fringe group of Grindelwald's?"

Jacques nodded.

"How do you know what Hydra's symbol looks like?" Steve asked curiously, and Bucky wished he was sitting closer to him so he could kick him. Because he'd just realized where Jacques would have seen it before.

Jacques looked down at the ground. "Les hommes qui ont tué ma famille portaient des épingles comme ça," he said in a hard voice.

Steve's eyes widened in horror, as did Monty and Dugan's. Jim cast a questioning look up at Peggy, who leaned down and whispered in his ear, and his eyes widened as well. Gabe just looked sad. Bucky figured he already knew.

"Jacques, I—I'm sorry," Steve stammered. "I didn't realize…I'm so sorry, I shouldn't've…"

One side of Jacques' mouth turned up in a smile, and he waved Steve's apology away. "C'est d'accord," he assured him. "Tu ne savias pas. Mais les gens devraient savoir que c'est de l'Hydre. Ils sont pire que Grindelwald. Tu ce qu'ils voulaient de ce bateau, ça ne peut qu'être mauvais."

Bucky took a minute to parse that out in his head. (He could see everyone else doing the same.) They'd heard that Hydra was worse than Grindelwald—there wasn't much said about them, but what people overheard from the teachers seemed to confirm that. And yeah, whatever they wanted off the boat must have been important, and ultimately, really bad, if they were willing to kill that many people for it.

"Do you think they went on Grindelwald's orders, or were they doing their own thing?" Bucky asked. Most of what anyone heard about Hydra was rumor, and rumor had it that Grindelwald had trouble controlling them.

Jacques shrugged. Bucky supposed it didn't matter.

"Hey, guys, I found what they took," Gabe said after a minute, breaking what was turning into an uncomfortable silence. News of the ghost ship had hit the non-magical papers, and he had a copy of the New York Times open on his lap. "The police finished going through the manifest—I guess maybe they got there faster than the Aurors, since they weren't investigating the magic too. Anyway, one box was missing. It was a crate of books that had been loaned to a university in the States and was being returned to the museum in Norway they belonged to. Like, old, medieval manuscript-type books."

"Were they books on magic?" Monty asked.

Gabe shook his head. "No. Says they were history books."

Bucky shared a puzzled look with Steve. What would a bunch of evil wizards want with a box of history books?

"Obviously there's something in there they were after," Peggy said. "Hydra must be looking for something too. I wonder if it's the same thing Grindewald's after." She looked thoughtful and didn't say any more, obviously thinking hard.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch break. They all stood, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws heading inside for Potions, while the Gryffindors traipsed off to join the Slytherins for Herbology. Steve packed his bag up hastily and hurried forward to catch up to Jacques. Bucky didn't catch what they were saying, but Steve's face looked like he was apologizing again. Jacques looked like he'd meant it when he'd told him it was alright.

Steve sighed as Bucky caught up to him and Jacques moved on ahead with Gabe. "I can't believe I asked him how he knew what Hydra looked like," Steve moaned. "I'm so stupid. I should've known that was how his family..."

Bucky patted him on the shoulder. "He didn't seem mad."

Steve shrugged. "He's not. It was still a stupid question, though."

"If you hadn't asked, I'm sure someone else would've," Bucky said. "What do you think Hydra wants Norwegian history books for?" he asked, trying to steer the conversation to something less awkward.

"Well," Steve said thoughtfully. "Like Peggy said, they must be looking for something. Maybe one of the books talks about something they want."

"Something magic?" Bucky wondered. Grindelwald, and by extension, Hydra, sure didn't seem the type to go after things made by non-magical people.

"Has to be," Steve said. "It's not like they'd think something someone else made was important. And medieval history books are weird anyway. Maybe there's something in one that's like a story or a legend that's actually real."

"I wonder what it could be?" Bucky mused.

* * *

_Meanwhile, in Germany…_

The little scientist squared back his shoulders, pushed his glasses up his nose and rapped on the door. "Come!" barked a sharp voice on the other side.

He hurried into the room. "Pardon the interruption, Herr Schmidt. You wished to be informed on the status of the mission?"

Johann Schmidt looked up from his desk. "Good news?" he asked, and coming from anyone else, that would have been a hopeful question, but it sounded more like a warning.

"Success," Zola replied, holding up an old, leather-bound book. The rest of the books were being catalogued—they might contain something useful—but they had only sought to recover one.

A predatory smile split Schmidt's face and he stood, gloved hand extended even as Zola dashed forward to meet him. "You have done well, Arnim," he said. He flicked his wand at his desk, sending parchment to the floor and setting the book carefully on the wooden surface.

Zola bent to pick up a letter that had landed at his feet. His eyes flicked to the text and away again, catching the sign of the Deathly Hallows at the bottom. "We have, er, new orders?" he asked tentatively, holding out the letter and hoping his question made clear he hadn't read it.

Schmidt grabbed the letter and tossed it to the side dismissively. "Ach!" he spat, waving a hand. "Grindelwald thinks he is getting closer. I sent some men to appease him. We must continue to humor him for now. But this…" He caressed the cover of the book, then snorted disdainfully. "He seeks a mere _wand_."

"The Elder Wand would be a formidable weapon," Zola allowed.

"A toy compared to this," Schmidt countered. He opened the book carefully, ancient pages crackling as they turned. Gently, he tapped a richly illuminated page, an invitation for Zola to draw forward and look. The colors and figures, even the gold leaf, seemed to pale in comparison to the vibrant blue in the middle of the page. It almost seemed to glow.

"The Tesseract," Schmidt whispered reverently. "Today, we find ourselves one step closer, Arnim. One step closer."


	10. The Calm Before The Storm

The winter break had been wet, gray and dreary. It rained every day, the snow was dirty and icy, and the sun had not come out the whole time they'd been home. Bucky had never been so cold in his life. He and Becky had been passing the same cold back and forth between each other for weeks. Steve spent most of the break at home with pneumonia. On the radio and in the papers, things seemed to be getting worse. The war in Europe kept spreading. The wizarding side of the fight had not been declared an actual war yet, but it had been ramping up too. More people were dying, more attacks were being made—some of it passed off as damage from the war.

But tonight…Tonight, it was Christmas. Tonight, the cold battering the windows with rain couldn't get in. The radiator in the corner burned merrily, and waves of warmth that smelled like sugar cookies were rolling in from the kitchen. Tonight, instead of bad news, music was drifting out of the radio, soft and familiar and soothing. The lights were down, allowing the twinkling lights on the tree and pinned up in the windows to bathe the room in a warm glow. Tonight, everything was warm and safe and happy.

Becky was sitting on the floor by the tree, cutting and sticking paper chains together. Bucky's ma was knitting, talking quietly with Steve's ma, who had her hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee. Bucky's pop was sitting in his chair, his newspaper abandoned to stretch out Becky's paper chain so she could see how long it was. Steve was a little hard to see down on the end of the couch by the radiator, being under about five blankets and all—he was still kind of sick, and he looked sleepy, but happy.

The soft music ended on the radio, and a livelier tune burst through the speaker. Bucky's pop got up and extended a hand to his ma, and she smiled and stood up and they started to dance. Becky giggled with delight and started spinning around in the corner, twirling her paper chain out behind her. Mrs. Rogers was watching them with a smile, and Bucky got up.

"Would you like to dance, Mrs. Rogers?" he asked her.

Her smile widened. "I would love to, Bucky." They started swinging in careful circles, mindful of Bucky's parents and Becky's twirling—the living room wasn't _that_ big.

"Dance with me, Steve, dance with me!" Becky pleaded. Bucky looked over to see her tugging on Steve's blankets, and he was about to tell her to leave him alone, but Steve smiled and untangled himself and got up. He wasn't dancing very energetically—or well—but he was smiling, and Becky was having a great time.

The music changed into another fast song, and they all switched partners. Becky twirled over to Bucky, Bucky's pop took Steve's ma's hand, and Bucky's ma was dancing with Steve now. Bucky knew Becky loved dancing with him, especially when he would pick her up and spin her around like people at the swing dances did. There wasn't exactly a lot of room in here, but he did his best, and she laughed and squealed, "Do it again, Jay, do it again!"

He danced the last dance with his ma. Becky was dancing with their pop, standing on his feet, and Mrs. Rogers and Steve were dancing by the Christmas tree. When the song ended, Bucky hugged his ma tight. "Merry Christmas, Ma," he whispered.

"Merry Christmas, sweetheart," she said, kissing him gently on the forehead.

Another slow song came on and they returned to their seats. Becky helped to pass around mugs of hot chocolate. It was warm and sweet and spiced in a way that reminded Bucky of Willow's tea. He didn't think he'd need help sleeping tonight, although…He looked over at Steve's pile of blankets on the couch just in time to see an empty mug slip out of his hands and hit the rug with a soft thump as he started snoring quietly. Becky giggled and Mrs. Rogers shook her head with a smile. "I think it's time we went home," she said.

Bucky's pop offered to walk them back across the street, and Bucky decided—since Steve was sick and all—he wouldn't tease him _too_ much in the morning about how his pop had scooped up his pile of blankets and carried him outside.

He went to bed feeling warm and content and peaceful.

He woke up somewhat less peacefully, mostly due to the fact that Becky had jumped on him. "Wake up! Wake up, Jay! It's Christmas!" she announced. He grunted and rolled over, then woke up with a gasp as a shock of cold air hit him. Becky was sitting at the foot of the bed grinning, still holding the covers she'd yanked away. "Still sleepy?" she asked with a wicked little smirk.

"You better watch yourself, Munchkin," he warned, before pouncing and rolling her up in the covers she was holding. She squealed as he tickled her, her feet sticking out of the roll of covers and kicking ineffectively. "Teach you to jump on me."

"Stop, stop, stop!" she giggled, and he grinned and tickled her a little longer before letting her go.

"Whatcha waiting for?" he asked, pulling his bathrobe and slippers on as she struggled to free herself from her cocoon. "It's Christmas!"

"Jay!" she yelled as he left the room. "No, Jay, wait! Wait for me!"

He lingered just outside the door until she finally untangled herself and he heard her feet pound across the floor as she chased after him. "Gotcha!" he exclaimed, and grabbed her and slung her up over his shoulder, carrying her into the living room.

"Morning, you two," his pop said, watching in amusement from the table as Bucky deposited her on the couch. She bounced off and ran to the table, flinging her little arms around him.

"Merry Christmas, Poppa," she said. He ruffled her hair and kissed her cheek.

"Merry Christmas, Pop," Bucky said, hugging him quickly before sitting down next to him. They all ate scrambled eggs and toast and spicy sausage balls together before moving to the living room to exchange gifts. There wasn't much—there was never much—but what there was was thoughtful and well-appreciated. Bucky got a very nice pocket knife and a scarf his ma knit for him in Hufflepuff colors. (Becky got a matching one and was over the moon.)

"Oh, gracious, look at the time!" his ma exclaimed, jumping up from the couch. "Go and get dressed, you two," she said, shooing Bucky and Becky off to their rooms. He heard his ma sigh. Bucky's pop was absorbed in the new electric drill the three of them had pooled their money to buy him. "George, you can read the instructions for that later. Go and put on your good shirt and help me with the tables."

An hour later, the furniture had been moved back, creating as much space in the living room as possible. The lights were all lit again and Christmas carols were playing on the record player. Bucky was uncomfortable in his over-starched Sunday shirt and kept tugging at the knot in his tie until his ma slapped his hand away. Becky was swishing her skirt back and forth.

The Kowalskis were the first to arrive, bearing dishes of food and followed by their little triplets who made a beeline for Becky. The Rogers and Mrs. O'Brien weren't far behind. Bucky went to help Steve's ma with everything she was carrying while Steve helped Mrs. O'Brien up the stairs. Last to arrive were the Garcias—all seven of them.

Once the Barnes's living room was full to bursting, out came the food with the cheerful clatter of mismatched plates and the tinkle of utensils. "I'll bet even the house elves would have trouble coming up with something this good," Steve whispered to Bucky—whispered, since the Garcias didn't know about magic.

Bucky nodded—everything smelled amazing. He reached over to redo Steve's tie—it was hanging crooked—and got his hand slapped for his trouble. "My tie's fine," Steve snapped.

"The skinny end's hanging down too far," Bucky pointed out, ignoring Steve's slap and redoing the tie anyway.

The food was fantastic. There was stuffing and green beans from the Rogers, a turkey Bucky's pop had roasted and fresh rolls his ma had made, three different kinds of potatoes from Mrs. O'Brien, what seemed like an infinite mountain of tamales from the Garcias, and a sweet ham and peppers stuffed with meat and vegetables that the Kowalskis had brought. (There had been a somewhat alarming moment when Steve had bitten into one of the peppers and turned red and made a weird squeaky sound and it looked like they'd found something new for him to be allergic to. Turned out it was just too spicy, and everyone got a good laugh out of it—even Steve, once he could breathe again.) The desserts afterwards were something else. Bucky reckoned everyone had been saving their sugar rations all month for this. Chocolate pie, coconut cake, cinnamon-sugar tortillas (which Bucky swore Steve ate about fifteen of), Jell-o with fruit and whipped cream, pecan pie and a strawberry tart.

Bucky sank down on the couch happily when the meal was over. He didn't think he'd eat again until they went back to school.

"You should sit up straighter," Steve said quietly.

"Why?" Bucky griped. Steve certainly wasn't—he was curled up in a little ball on the end of the couch by the radiator again. He sounded a little wheezy too, but much better than he had for most of the break. He'd almost kicked this thing.

Steve smirked. "Just thought you might wanna look nice, seeing as Carmella's watching you."

"What?" Bucky asked, shooting a look at the kitchen where the oldest of the Garcia girls was setting coffee cups on a tray, blushing slightly when Bucky caught her eye. Bucky sat up straighter on the couch, one hand going to adjust the knot on his tie.

Steve's smile widened. "She's been looking at you all morning."

Bucky felt his cheeks warming, but smiled across the room at her. She smiled back and returned her attention to the coffee cups.

Everyone gathered around to sing carols after that—the Barneses didn't have a piano or anything, but Bucky's pop, Mr. Kowalski and Mr. Garcia made up three quarters of their barbershop quartet, so they kept everyone on key. Mostly.

They sat around and talked for a while after the singing. The little Kowalskis and the youngest Garcias were playing on the rug under Becky and Carmella's watchful eyes. Bucky made his way over, casually he thought, ignoring Steve's snort of laughter. Becky disappeared not long after. They talked for a little while before the Garcias had to leave for a family dinner on the other side of town. Bucky helped them carry their things out to the car, coming back up the stairs smiling at the prospect of meeting up with Carmella on Saturday for a walk down to the soda shop.

Becky appeared from wherever she'd been as he came back in the door. "Bucky and Carmella, sittin' in a tree…" she teased in a sing-song voice. Bucky stuck out his tongue at her and kept walking.

Steve had fallen asleep on his end of the couch, unperturbed by the delighted squeals of laughter from the Kowalski triplets as Mrs. O'Brien enchanted one of Becky's paper chains to fold itself into dozens of tiny birds that fluttered around the room. He woke up rather abruptly as one of the little paper birds swooped down by his head and Aleksy Kowalski smacked him in the face trying to catch it.

"Look on the bright side, Stevie," Bucky said, sitting down next to him as Steve rubbed his nose. "You're awake, which means that Pop doesn't have to carry you home tonight."

Steve turned redder than he had when he bit into the pepper, and Bucky laughed so hard he couldn't breathe.

* * *

Because of various scheduling conflicts, there hadn't actually been a Hogsmeade weekend during first term, much to the disappointment of the Third-Years. The second Saturday back was going to be their first one, and Steve woke up early, excited. He was less excited when it was time to go and he was standing in the entry hall arguing with Bucky, who was trying to wrap his own scarf around Steve's neck.

"I'm already wearing a scarf, Bucky, get off!" he complained, swatting the scarf away from his face.

"It's January and it's snowing, Steve," Bucky replied, unperturbed. "And it's a long walk."

"So?"

"So, put the scarf on so we can go," Bucky insisted. He flung the scarf out and caught Steve around the neck. A couple of Slytherin girls giggled as they walked by.

Steve could have put up a fight, but he would have lost eventually anyway, so he decided to give in and wear the second scarf. "I look ridiculous," he complained as they walked outside. Only his eyes were visible above the voluminous coils of yellow and black.

"But you're breathing," Bucky said, moving off after the crowd, tugging the lapels of his coat up around his face. Grumbling, Steve followed. The cold air _did_ aggravate his asthma. Not that he would admit to Bucky that this was helping.

"Jerk," Steve muttered.

"Punk," Bucky shot back, though how he'd heard the muttered words through the layers of yarn, Steve would never know.

It was a long walk down to the village. They'd started off all in one big group, but spread out the farther they went. It wasn't long until Steve and Bucky were bringing up the rear, walking slowly in deference to Steve's breathing. Steve figured Bucky was probably worried about his heart too, because Bucky worried about everything. (And, sure, maybe if he _ran_ to Hogsmeade, but walking wasn't going to hurt anything.)

When they finally got to the village, they stepped into the apothecary, the first shop they came to. They stamped the snow off of their shoes at the door and shook out their coats. Steve took off Bucky's scarf and Bucky took it back now that they were inside. Steve's first thought was that it was like their Potions class magnified by ten. The room was warmed by a couple of cauldrons bubbling merrily by the windows, multi-colored potions splashing inside. The shelves were lined with boxes of ingredients and jars of pickled things—some of which looked non-descript, and one of which Steve was pretty sure was full of cat skulls. Large barrels of colored powders, wispy feathers and shimmering beetles stood by a table with scoops and scales.

"Whoa, look at this," Bucky said, directing Steve's attention to a shelf full of jars containing nothing but eyeballs.

"Ew," Steve said, leaning in to look closer. They were all labeled, from tiny tadpole's eyes up to surprisingly large horse eyes. He was very glad to see none of them contained human eyes, but there was a tank on the end containing a massive, single eyeball the size of a watermelon. The label said that one was a deep-sea squid. "I wonder what you'd use that for?"

"Dunno," Bucky said. "Would you use it all at once, or chop it up into pieces?"

"Ugh," Steve said, shuddering and moving over to the barrels. One of them was full almost to the brim with iridescent blue dragon scales. He ran his hand over the top of them, listening to them chime as they played through his fingers. They were cold and smooth and felt like glass.

They wandered the store, warming up and marveling over the more exotic ingredients that they had yet to come across in class. "Hey, Bucky, check it out! Unicorn horns!" They were locked in a glass display case by the counter, four of them gleaming gold. As Steve shifted, they caught the light and changed colors—pearly white from one angle, silver from another, and a shimmery pink from another.

"Whoa," Bucky breathed. "Awesome." Unicorn horns weren't needed for a lot, but they were impossible to substitute for when you did need one. They were rare and incredibly expensive, given how hard they were to get. (According to both Professor Erskine and Professor Ellerton, horns were only supposed to be taken from a unicorn that had died recently of natural causes, which is what made them so hard to get. Cutting a horn off a live unicorn or killing one to take the horn were both super-illegal—and since unicorns were highly magical creatures, you'd usually end up with a curse or two too.)

"Twenty-five galleons," Bucky mused, eyeing the price tag. "How much is that in dollars?"

Steve frowned, calculating. Knuts to cents he could do, but neither of them ever had the spending money to concern themselves with higher denominations, so he wasn't very familiar with what struck him as an arbitrary conversion system. Wizards in the States just used dollars. "Um, like sixty bucks, I think."

"Holy cow!" Bucky exclaimed. "For one horn? Man, no wonder we don't use these at school." He nodded towards the door. "Let's go before we breathe on these wrong and break 'em or something."

They headed back out and passed several shops with magical window displays—posters flashed back and forth between different items for sale, or goods floated and danced on shelves, drawing the eye. Their next stop was Honeydukes, and Steve's first thought was that he must've died and gone to Heaven. It smelled _amazing_. There was candy everywhere, bright and colorful and delicious-looking. Some of it was familiar, some of it was new and enticing, and some of it looked a little scary—there was a big vat of something that looked like licorice pieces, but they were moving.

"If it's your first foray into the world of magical sweets, I would avoid those," Peggy said from behind them. She nodded at the vat of moving things. "They bite."

"Good to know," Steve said, moving away from them. "So, what's good? I've never had magic candy before."

"Well," she mused, looking around the store. "Bertie Botts Beans are quite fun. And chocolate frogs are good if you want to try something that moves but tastes normal. Oh, and these are good!" She pointed to what looked like braided strings of colored licorice. "It's licorice, but it comes in all sorts of flavors—nice ones—and they're fizzy, like a Coke made into something you can eat." She stood on her toes, craning her neck to see toward the door. "Oh, sorry, I've got to go, Kelly and Martha are waiting for me. I think we're going to the Three Broomsticks. Maybe we'll see you there." She smiled and left.

Steve didn't realize he was staring after her with his mouth hanging part of the way open until Bucky bumped his arm. "You're so smooth, Steve," he said. "A regular Clark Gable."

"Shut up," he growled. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks.

Bucky grinned and bumped his arm again. "Come on. You want some fudge? The lady at the counter's giving away free samples."

They went up and tried some of the fudge, and it was creamier than anything Steve had ever tasted. He bought two small boxes of it—one to send to his ma. He also bought a bag of the fizzy licorice Peggy had suggested. Bucky got a box of Chocolate Frogs.

Steve was going to wait until he got back to school to send the fudge to his ma—the school owls were free—but they stopped inside the Post Office to have a look around anyway. Inside, it felt cramped and feathery and smelled very strongly of bird. There were little tiny owls that fit into the palm of Steve's hand, all the way up to Eagle Owls and something large in the corner that Steve was pretty sure could have carried him. They weren't there very long before the concentration of down and feathers started making it hard for Steve to breathe, so they hurried back out into the snow.

"You okay?" Bucky asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Uh huh," Steve nodded, taking long, deep breaths. He could already feel his throat opening up again. Bucky eyed him suspiciously. "I'm fine. It was just too much at once."

"You don't do this in the Owlery, though," Bucky insisted.

"The Owlery has windows and stuff. There's actually air in there," Steve countered. Bucky continued to look suspicious and Steve sighed. "I'm not allergic to owls, and if the air's circulating, the down doesn't bother me." He looked Bucky in the eye. "I'm good now. See?" He drew in an exaggerated deep breath.

Bucky looked him over critically, then seemed to decide he believed him. "Okay. You wanna go to the Three Broomsticks?" He smirked. "Peggy might still be there."

"Yeah, okay," Steve said, trying to sound unconcerned. Judging by Bucky's smile, he didn't know that he'd managed it.

The Three Broomsticks was warm and cheerful and filled with Hogwarts students. They found a table by the fire with Gabe, Jacques and Jim. "Hey, guys!" Gabe said, moving over to make room. "Is this place cool or what? What kind of stuff did you guys see?"

They compared notes over the shops they'd visited, spending the most time comparing their candy purchases. Jacques had been the only one bold enough to buy some of the biting licorice things.

"He did that so he won't have to share," Jim said sagely. Jacques smiled serenely and offered the box to him, removing the lid. The candy looked and sounded like a nest of bugs. "No way, man," Jim said, holding up his hands. Jacques snickered and put the lid back on.

"Where's Monty and Dugan?" Bucky wondered.

"Dugan wanted to go to the Hog's Head and see if he could buy some Firewhisky," Gabe said.

Steve frowned. "Don't you have to be, like, seventeen to drink that?"

"Yeah," Gabe nodded. "Dugan figured he'd give it a shot anyway. Monty went with him to see what would happen."

"I imagine," Professor Erskine said from the next table, startling them all. "That what will happen is that Timothy will shortly be receiving a detention." He huffed a small laugh. "Professor Phillips is currently at the Hog's Head," he explained. The boys all looked at one another and started laughing, and Professor Erskine smiled and returned to his conversation with Professor Sparks.

Gabe, Jim and Jacques took off, and Bucky went up to the counter to get drinks. Steve edged a little closer to the fire and looked around. It seemed to be a pretty popular place, not just with students, but with the locals as well. Steve stared around in fascination at the gathered wizards. Most wizards he knew dressed like regular people—he wondered now if that was because most wizards he knew were American, and lived in non-magical communities. There was no need to dress to conform here—robes in bright colors and the occasional garish pattern abounded. It must just be a thing you got used to, he figured. His uniform did include a robe that went over his shirt and slacks, but it was always the first thing to come off in the common room or on the train. He was always much more comfortable in his regular clothes. He wondered if he'd grown up wearing robes, if that would still be the case.

Just as he was starting to wonder what was taking Bucky so long, Peggy stopped by his table. "Hello, Steve," she greeted.

"Hey, Peggy," he said with a smile.

She nodded up toward the counter. "Are they back together, then?" she asked.

Steve followed her gaze and saw Bucky leaning against the bar. Vicki Marlowe's hand was resting on his arm, and she was laughing at something he'd just said. Steve arched an eyebrow. "Kind of looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Johnny Wolcott's going to be rather disappointed, I think," Peggy said with a grin.

"So is Carmella Garcia," Steve replied.

Peggy laughed and sat down, and they talked for a while about the Potion essay they had coming up and whether Ravenclaw's new Quidditch captain would do anything to improve their standings. There hadn't been anything bad in the news since the start of the new year—well, nothing catastrophically bad, anyway. There was a war on, after all—and Steve wondered how long it would be before that changed. It was nice to talk about something normal.

Bucky finally broke away from Vicki, grabbed the drinks that had been sitting at his elbow for a while and made his way back to the table. "Hey, Peggy," he said. "I didn't know you were over here. Let me go back and get you a drink," he offered, setting down the two he was carrying.

"It's alright, Bucky, thanks. I've just finished one. I'm just waiting for Martha, who," she paused, arching a significant eyebrow at Bucky. "Was very pleased to note that Johnny Wolcott seems to be available now."

"You know, I think he is," Bucky said, not blushing, but unable to stop himself from grinning as he sat down.

Steve chuckled. "I feel like Carmella might have something to say about that," he said, taking a drink of his Coke.

"She might," Bucky agreed, taking a sip of his own drink. "It would probably go something along the lines of, 'Hey, Bucky, I had fun at Christmas, but since you're not around much, I'm gonna go out with Robert Alvez instead.'" He arched an amused eyebrow at Steve. "Exactly what kind of man do you take me for, Stevie?"

Steve chuckled and Peggy smiled. "Word around the girls' dorms is that you're quite the gentleman."

"Thank you, Miss Carter," Bucky said, raising his Coke bottle in her direction.

She smiled and stood. "I'll see you boys later. Bye, Steve."

"Bye, Peggy," he said, giving her a little wave.

Bucky, thoughtfully, waited until Peggy was out of earshot before letting out an exasperated snort. "Ask her out already, Steve," he said.

"I don't, I mean, I don't know…" he stammered. Peggy was great, and, yeah, he _really_ liked her, but they were friends, and it was weird, and what if she said no?

Bucky smiled and shook his head but didn't press the issue.

"Hey, you know I was just kidding, right?" Steve said. "About Carmella. I wasn't saying you were, like, _that_ kind of guy." Bucky was incredibly popular with the girls, but he never messed around like that. One girl at a time for him—he wasn't Howard Stark.

Bucky shook his head again, this time accompanying it with that sigh that Steve got a lot that meant he was being an idiot. "I know, Steve," Bucky told him. He smiled. "Now finish up your soda so we can get back up to school in time for lunch."

Steve smirked. "I wouldn't have to hurry if you'd brought it back to the table when you got it," he pointed out. "Good thing we didn't order anything hot."

"Shut up, punk," Bucky replied, still grinning. He reached over to slap the side of Steve's head, but Steve had seen it coming and ducked.

* * *

For once, Steve's trek up to the infirmary wasn't because there was anything wrong with him. It was a little weird, being up here and not being in a bed. Today, he was here for Bucky. Yesterday's game between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had been a tough one, not made any better by the late winter thunderstorm. Bucky had taken a Bludger to the side of the head, lost his grip on his wet broomstick, and fallen a really, really long way down to the ground. Nurse Rains said it was just as well that he'd been knocked unconscious—the bones in his left leg had shattered into splinters when he hit the ground. Steve had some experience with broken bones, and though he'd never broken one that badly before, he figured she was right—unconsciousness was a blessing at that point.

Once Bucky had woken up, it turned out he'd had a hell of a concussion too, which complicated things. He threw up every time he tried to sit up, had trouble putting together a complete sentence, and kept losing vision in his left eye. Nurse Rains gave him a potion for the concussion and another one to calm him down and put him back to sleep, and assured Steve that he would be fine in the morning. Steve still spent a very worried night down in the dorm, not getting much sleep. (Bucky had never told him how to sneak into the infirmary, or he'd be up there instead.) He didn't like being on this side of the sick bed at all. No wonder Bucky got so irritable when Steve got hurt.

He'd run up there first thing in the morning, and once Bucky woke up again, Rains had been right, his head was fine. "I can talk in sentences and everything now, Stevie," Bucky had told him with a wink.

The problem now was his leg. The bone had shattered so completely that there really wasn't enough for Nurse Rains to put back together. They were going to have to grow him a new one. Which, thanks to magic, was totally doable. They'd had to wait until his head was better, though. Apparently, the potion for the concussion and Skele-Gro didn't mix very well. It was also going to take a little while. He'd be in the infirmary for one more night.

Steve had spent the morning talking to him, trying to keep his mind off his leg—regrowing bones was a painful process. Probably bearing this in mind, Nurse Rains was bending the rules on visitor limitations (only four at a time), which Steve knew Bucky was grateful for—the guys and Peggy helped to provide a welcome distraction. (Although, Peggy was less distracting than she could have been, since she kept apologizing for being the one to put him in here in the first place.)

Steve hurried through lunch and back up to the infirmary, swinging by the dorm on the way to grab Bucky's schoolbag—now that he was coherent again, he didn't want to get behind on his weekend homework.

"Hey, Buck," he said. He flopped down into the chair by the bed and set down the bag. "Vicki come up to visit during lunch?" he asked, grinning.

Bucky arched a curious eyebrow. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

Steve's grin widened. "Just a guess. That lipstick's not your normal shade, so…"

Bucky wiped at his mouth with his sleeve and Steve laughed. Bucky cocked an eyebrow and smirked.

"How's the leg?" Steve asked.

"If I think about it," Bucky said conversationally. "I think I can feel all the little pieces in there, so I'm trying not to do that. It's not working so well. Did you bring me homework?"

"You want the Defense Against The Dark Arts essay or the Transfiguration questions?"

"Gimme the essay, that sounds harder."

Steve pulled out a roll of parchment and a quill, along with a textbook. "And since I've already done this essay," he said. "I can tell you you'll probably want this too." He pulled out a library book on Dark creatures. "Freshwater creatures are in Chapter Seven."

"Thanks."

He worked on it for a little while. Steve flipped through his Transfiguration book, looking up when Bucky hissed and dropped his quill. "You okay?"

Bucky grimaced and nodded. "Yeah." He set his parchment in his lap and pushed himself up gingerly with his arms, dragging his injured leg carefully up the mattress. "Ow."

"Can I get you anything?"

Bucky shook his head. "It'll stop in a minute. It's been doing this all morning." He leaned forward and rubbed his calf carefully. "Stupid broken bones," he muttered. "I hate playing Quidditch in the rain." He sighed and leaned back against his pillow, the wave of pain having evidently passed. "Where's my quill?"

Steve leaned down to pick it up off the floor where it had fallen. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Steve apparently didn't look convinced, because Bucky smiled and shook his head. "I am. I mean, I'll be better tomorrow, but I'm okay."

After Bucky finished the essay, Steve pulled out a pack of cards. Bucky tucked his good leg up so Steve could sit in the empty space at the foot of the bed. "How is it," he started while Steve shuffled. "That you're in and out of here all the time, and the one time _I_ get stuck in here, I have to practically grow a whole new leg?"

Steve shrugged. "Like you said, you're not in here much. I guess you gotta make it count when you are."

Bucky drew a card. "If we're trying to make things even, why don't you just not end up here so often?"

"I'll get on that," Steve said, picking up a card.

"You do that. So, did we at least win?"

"Huh?"

"The game," Bucky clarified. "Nobody said anything about it this morning. And if they said it yesterday, it's not like I'd remember. Tell me I didn't fall off my broom in vain, Steve."

"We won," Steve assured him. "Barely, though."

"Barely? Weren't we up by, like, ninety?"

"Well, yeah, but after you got hit, we were down a Chaser. We didn't score any more, and Donovan caught the Snitch in time for us to win by ten."

Bucky gaped. "Ten points? Gryffindor scored twenty-three times after I fell? What'd I do, take the Keeper out with me?"

Steve huffed a laugh. "I have no idea what happened, I was up here with you. Full House, by the way," he added, laying his cards down on the blanket.

Bucky looked down at Steve's cards, then back up at Steve. "I thought we were playing Gin."

* * *

_Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's been keeping up with the story! I hope you're enjoying it-I'd love to hear what you think!_


	11. The Stillness Shattered

They were reviewing for a test in Defense Against The Dark Arts when there was a knock at the door in the back of the classroom. Everyone turned to see who it was as Professor Erskine stepped into the room. Phillips cleared his throat loudly and they all returned to their studying, casting surreptitious glances to the back of the room. Erskine and Phillips spoke in low whispers, and neither one looked happy. It had to be serious Auror business to interrupt class like this.

Phillips looked back at the class, who were all trying very hard not to act like they were watching. His gaze landed on Steve, a rare softness in his eyes. "Rogers," he said uncharacteristically gently. He nodded for Steve to come to the door. "Get your stuff."

Steve looked suddenly terrified, casting a nervous glance at Bucky, but obediently packing up his bag. Was he in trouble? Had something happened? What was going on?

Erskine leaned in and whispered something to Phillips. Phillips nodded, and this time, his eyes met Bucky's. "Barnes, you'd better come too."

Bucky grabbed his stuff and hurried up to join Steve, conscious of every eye in the classroom watching them. Were they getting expelled? They hadn't done anything to warrant that—not that Bucky knew of, anyway—but he couldn't think of anything else that might be happening.

"Come with me," Erskine said, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "I'll explain outside."

The look in Phillips' eye was sorrowful as he watched them go, and Bucky swallowed down a knot of worry. That couldn't be good. As the door to the classroom shut behind them, he heard Phillips bark, "At what point did I tell you to stop? Back to work, ladies and gentlemen!"

"Professor, what's going on?" Steve asked nervously.

Erskine sighed deeply. "The school received a letter this morning," he said. He sighed again. "Steven, your mother is very sick."

Steve was suddenly white as a sheet. Bucky moved over, his arm pressing against Steve's. "What happened?" he asked, taking over as Steve struggled to speak.

Erskine shook his head. "I don't know. The letter didn't go into detail. I'm going to take you to the hospital to see her. Go and pack some things, and meet me in the entryway in twenty minutes." He squeezed Steve's shoulder, smiled sadly, and moved away.

Steve was staring at the wall, so Bucky wrapped an arm around his shoulders and steered him gently toward their dorm. "C'mon, Steve," he said softly. Steve didn't speak the whole way there. Bucky swallowed down the temptation to tell Steve not to worry, that everything would be alright. It had to be serious if they were pulling him out of school.

He moved Steve to sit on his bed and opened Steve's closet. He pulled out some clothes, sat them on the bed by Steve, then grabbed a backpack from his own closet. Grabbing some clothes of his own, he stuffed them in the bag and placed Steve's on top. He pulled all of Steve's medicines out of the nightstand and stuffed them into a side pocket just in case—he didn't know how long they'd be gone.

Once the bag was on his shoulders, he moved back over to Steve. "You ready to go?" he asked gently.

Steve blinked. "Bucky," he whispered. "It's gotta be bad, if they're…" He swallowed hard, worried tears brimming in his eyes.

Bucky tugged him to his feet and into a hug. "I know, Stevie," he said. He hated that he couldn't make it okay. "But we'll figure it out, okay?" He hugged him tighter then pulled away. "Let's go see her."

Steve nodded and allowed Bucky to wrap an arm over his shoulders, leaning against his friend as they walked. He barely came as high as Bucky's armpit now, so he fit neatly under his arm, tucked against his side. Bucky hoped he felt safe.

Erskine was waiting for them by the large front doors. "We'll have to leave the grounds before we can apparate, but then we'll go straight to the hospital. Have either of you apparated before?" he asked, as they moved toward the front gates.

"No, sir," Bucky said. Steve shook his head minutely.

"It can be a bit unsettling," Erskine warned. "But just keep hold of me and you'll be fine."

They didn't talk as they crossed the grounds. Outside of the gate, Erskine took each of their hands firmly in his own. "Don't let go," he said.

Suddenly they were spinning through space. Bucky felt like he was being pulled out in every direction and being pressed in from every direction at the same time. It hurt and it didn't, and he couldn't breathe or see a thing, and then all at once they were standing in an alley outside a large building. He staggered sideways as it took his head another couple of seconds to realize they weren't moving anymore. A retching sound pulled his gaze around behind him, and he saw Steve leaning against the building, throwing up onto the sidewalk. "I'm sorry," Erskine said. Bucky moved to put a hand on Steve's shoulder. "It takes some getting used to."

"I'm okay," Steve insisted, straightening up and wiping a hand across his mouth.

They moved around to the front of the building, and Bucky recognized where they were. "Why are we here?" Steve asked. "This isn't ma's hospital."

"This is St. Clement's," Bucky said. "The wizard hospital." Steve's ma worked at St. Francis.

Steve looked unsure whether he should be relieved or not that she was here. Bucky knew how he felt. On the one hand, magic could do a lot that ordinary medicine couldn't. On the other, needing to be where there was magic only meant it was more serious—especially since wizard hospitals didn't usually accept non-magical patients.

They went inside and Erskine went to the desk, speaking in low tones with the receptionist. She directed them to a ward on the fourth floor, where Bucky was surprised to find his mother waiting.

"Ma?" he asked.

"Bucky," she replied, turning at the sound of his voice. She moved forward to give him a hug, pulling Steve into her arms as well. "Oh, Steve, I'm so sorry, dear. Are you alright?"

"Yes'm," Steve nodded quietly into her shoulder.

"Come on inside," she said, standing and letting them go. "She's been waiting for you." She turned to Erskine. "Thank you, Professor."

"Of course, Mrs. Barnes," Erskine said. They moved into the ward and Erskine followed them. Bucky remembered he used to be a Healer. Maybe there was something he could do.

A nurse stopped them just inside the door. "Sarah Rogers?" she asked, looking at Bucky's ma for confirmation.

"Yes," she said. "This is her son."

"One moment, son," the nurse said, as Steve kept walking. She held out a necklace with a small charm on the end. "Put this on. She's still contagious," she explained. "This will stop you from catching it."

Steve nodded and took the charm, mumbling something that was probably a 'thank you'. Bucky hadn't thought about it before now, but he was glad the nurse had. Mrs. Rogers worked in a hospital, and even though she was around sick people all the time, she hardly ever got sick herself. If whatever this was was bad enough to put her in a hospital, Steve wouldn't have stood a chance.

Steve moved toward the bed where his mother was, sinking into the chair offered by Bucky's father. Bucky hung back, wanting to give his friend some privacy. His pop came over to where he was waiting with his ma and Erskine, stopping beside him and resting a hand on his shoulder. A Healer had joined them.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Erskine asked.

"Of course, Sir," the Healer replied. Bucky wondered if he knew Erskine was an Auror. Was this…was this a case of some kind?

"Mrs. Rogers was admitted last night with what was thought to be a case of tuberculosis. Given her work environment, the diagnosis was hardly surprising. Her symptoms, however, were escalating at too rapid a pace to be a typical case."

The Healer paused, as if considering his next words. Erskine nodded for him to continue.

"This isn't the first we've seen of this strain," the Healer said. "There are a few others here on the ward, and cases have been appearing along the Eastern seaboard. It seems to crop up in non-magical communities, which is why we're having a hard time tracking it. It…" He sighed. "This strain has been magically altered. It's a spell none of us have seen before."

"Someone's doing this on purpose?" asked Bucky's father, sounding horrified.

"It appears so," the Healer answered. "There are Aurors looking into it. They suspect…"

"Grindelwald," Erskine finished grimly. The Healer nodded.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Bucky asked.

The adults looked down at him as if they were surprised he was still there. The Healer drew in a long breath. "No," he said softly. "I'm sorry, son, she's not." He looked back up at Erskine. "We can contain this, but we have no idea how to cure it."

Bucky's heart dropped into his stomach, and his dad squeezed his shoulder. "Why don't you go and sit with Steve, son?" he asked quietly.

Bucky nodded numbly. Steve's ma was…she was going to die. Steve shouldn't be alone.

* * *

"Mama?" Steve asked, sinking down into the chair by her bed. She looked pale, drawn and thin, sleeping uneasily on the hospital bed.

Her eyes fluttered open at his voice, and a tired smile creased her lips as she came awake. "Steve," she breathed.

"Hi, Ma," he said, trying to smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Not very good, I'm afraid." She reached up a hand to brush his cheek. "I'm glad you're here, sweetie."

"We got a letter at school today and Professor Erskine brought me," he said. "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?" he asked. He'd gotten a letter from her just days before. Everything had sounded fine.

"It all came up so fast. I was fine yesterday," she said, breaking into a cough. Steve's eyes widened in alarm as he watched blood spatter her hand. He quickly pulled out a handkerchief to wipe it away. "Thank you," she said quietly. Suddenly, her own eyes went wide. "Oh, Steve, honey, you need to be careful. You shouldn't be this close—I don't want you catching this."

"It's alright, Ma," Steve assured her, patting her hand. He held up the charm the nurse had given him. "The nurse gave me this. It's a protective charm to stop me from catching it."

She sighed in relief. "Oh, good. Good. I'm sorry, dear, you know I worry about you."

Steve smiled. "I know. But I'll be okay. It's my turn to worry about you now. What do you need, Ma? Can I do anything?"

"Some water would be nice," she said, stifling another cough. Steve nodded and turned to the table beside the bed, grabbing a pitcher and pouring her a glass. He held it steady for her while she drank.

"Don't worry, Ma," he told her, pulling the glass away when she was done. "The doctors are gonna help you and I'm gonna be right here to take care of you until you get better."

Her face fell. "Oh, Steve," she said sadly, taking his hand. "They didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?" Steve asked nervously.

"Steve, I—" she coughed again. "Steve, I'm not going to get better," she said quietly.

A cold, heavy weight dropped into Steve's stomach. "What? No! No, you'll be okay!" he insisted. This was a wizard hospital. They had magic, they could do anything. "The doctors here have magic, they can fix it! They can—" He stopped as she reached up a hand to brush his cheek again.

"They can't," she said softly.

"No," Steve protested. There had to be something. He couldn't lose her. Not like this.

"I'm so sorry, Steve," she said.

He shook his head, tears welling in his eyes.

"Oh, baby, come here," she said, and he fell into her arms. She pulled him close against her chest, stroking his hair as he wept.

"You can't go, Ma," he sniffed. "You _can't_."

She didn't say anything, just kissed his forehead and held him tighter. He didn't know how long they sat there, but eventually his tears ran out. He didn't have much time left with her. He didn't want to spend all of it crying. "I'm sorry, Ma," he said roughly, sitting up and wiping at his eyes.

"Don't be, Steve," she told him. "You're going to have to be brave now, but that doesn't mean you can't cry." He sniffed and nodded, and she smiled and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind his ear. "I'm going to miss you, too, sweetheart."

His lip quivered and she squeezed his hand. "Don't worry about me, though, alright? I'll be okay. I'll get to see your father again. Oh," she sighed, putting a hand to the side of his face. "If he could see you now. He'd be so proud of you."

Steve hoped she was right. He'd never met his father. At least that was something, that Ma would be with him. She wouldn't be alone. Not like Steve would.

She stroked his cheek with her thumb. "I'm proud of you too," she said softly. "You're so sweet and kind and brave. You know what's right and you fight for it. Don't ever lose that, sweetie."

"I won't, Ma," he told her, his voice wavering. "I promise." He clasped his hand over the one she had on his cheek and smiled. "If I know what the right thing is, it's only because you taught me so well." Bucky sometimes teased that he had an 'over-developed sense of justice', and maybe he did, but he'd come by it honestly. Sarah Rogers had never spoken an unkind word in her life, never turned away anyone who'd ever asked her for help. She always said that it was never too soon to help someone, because you never knew when it would be too late.

She smiled at that. "I did my best."

"You did great," he assured her.

Her smile widened, though tears prickled in the corners of her eyes. "I wish I could be here to watch you grow up," she said sadly. "To see the wonderful man you're going to become."

Steve blinked back tears and looked down. "I wish you could too, Ma," he said softly. He swallowed hard and looked back up. "But I'll be okay."

"I know you will, sweetie. But I'm your mother. It's my job to worry about you." She smiled when she said it, and Steve smiled too. She said that a lot.

She yawned, and Steve reached over and brushed her hair back. "Get some rest, Ma," he said. "I'll be right here."

* * *

Bucky didn't want Steve to be alone, but he didn't want to interrupt the time he had left with his ma either. They were speaking in soft tones, and Steve looked like he was trying not to cry, so instead of joining them, Bucky drifted to the window at the end of the ward. He looked out over the city, fiddling with the charm the nurse had given him. His eyes kept drifting back to Steve and his ma. It just wasn't fair. Mrs. Rogers had never done anything to hurt anyone in her life. She spent all her time helping people. And she was repaid by being an anonymous victim of a terrorist with stupid manifesto about magical superiority?

Bucky growled, gripping the charm so tightly the edges cut into his palm. He didn't understand how anyone could think Grindelwald and his ridiculous ideas were right. Sarah Rogers was a better person than a number of wizards Bucky could name, but because she didn't have magic, she was worth less than they were? He knew Grindelwald and his followers had hurt a lot of people. Hell, he shared a room with a kid who'd watched them murder his entire family. But this was Mrs. Rogers. Someone he knew, someone he loved. Maybe it was selfish of him to only truly be hurt by it now that it had hit close to home, but he got it now. He got why everyone was so afraid, why everyone was so angry. He got why everyone was ready for war. Because this should never have happened.

He glanced back over and saw that Mrs. Rogers had fallen back asleep. Steve was sitting forlornly by the side of the bed, and Bucky moved over quickly, anger fading away to concern. "Hey, Steve," he said softly.

Steve looked up, blinking weary, red eyes up at him. "Hey, Buck," he whispered.

Bucky sat on the arm of the chair, tugging Steve over to lean against him. "I'm so sorry, Stevie," he said. He didn't know what else to say. He felt Steve nod against his leg.

They sat there for a while, just watching her sleep, each lost in their own thoughts. He wasn't sure how long it had been when the Healer came by. "Mr. Rogers?" he asked carefully.

It took Steve a moment to realize that was him. "Yes, sir?" he asked.

The Healer smiled kindly. "Could you come with me for a moment?" Steve hesitated, looked back at his mother. "It will only be a few minutes," he assured him.

"It's okay, Steve," Bucky said. "I'll watch her."

Steve nodded, and got up to follow the Healer. They'd been gone for a few minutes when Mrs. Rogers came awake again. "Steve?" she asked, blinking in Bucky's direction.

"No, ma'am," Bucky said, leaning in closer. "It's Bucky. Steve went with the Healer—he'll be back in a minute. Can I get you anything?"

"No, it's alright," she said. "Thank you, Bucky." She smiled up at him. "You've always been such a good friend to my Steve. I don't know if I ever thanked you for that."

Bucky blushed, unsure of what to say. She reached over and patted his arm. "Ever since that first day, when you came over with Steve and were using your sleeve to stop his bleeding nose, you've been like part of our family." Each of their mothers had always joked that since that day, so very, very long ago, they'd had two sons. Bucky had always felt at home with Steve and Mrs. Rogers. She sighed. "If I had ever had a second son, I would have wanted it to be you," she said sincerely.

Something moved in Bucky's chest, feeling warm and like home and sad and tight all at once. "You always made me feel like family, ma'am," he told her with as much of a smile as he could manage. "You and Steve are my second home." He swallowed hard around a sudden tightness in his throat. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Rogers. I wish it—" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

She squeezed his hand. "I know." She blinked watery eyes up at him. "Bucky, will you do something for me?"

"Of course, Mrs. Rogers," he said hurriedly. "Anything you need."

She smiled sadly. "Look after Steve for me, will you? You've always been there for him, and now he's going to need you more than ever."

Bucky nodded. He always looked after Steve. He would do it even if Mrs. Rogers hadn't asked. "I'll take care of him," he promised. "Don't you worry."

"Thank you, dear," she said softly. "You've always been such a good boy." She reached up to touch his cheek. "I'm going to miss watching you grow up too."

Bucky smiled sadly and nodded, not sure of what else to say.

"Ma!" Steve breathed, rushing back from wherever he'd gone with Healer. "Are you okay?"

"I'm alright, sweetheart. Bucky's been looking after me."

Steve shot a quick, grateful glance up at his friend, then returned his attention to his mother. Steve looked teary again—he'd probably gotten the rundown from the doctor about what was going on. He sat down on the bed next to her, and she wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head down to rest on her shoulder. Bucky stood and moved away to give them their privacy. As he went, he heard Mrs. Rogers start to hum. It was an old Irish lullaby he knew she sang to Steve when he was sick. He could just catch Steve singing softly along with her.

Bucky sank down onto a bench next to one of the windows, his eyes burning as he willed the tears behind them not to fall. A few minutes later, Professor Erskine sat beside him. "May I join you?" he asked. Bucky nodded, hastily wiping at his eyes. They sat in silence for a few minutes. "How are you doing, James?" Erskine asked at last.

Bucky looked up at him. "Me? I'm fine, sir," he said. He wasn't the one whose mother was dying.

Erskine nodded. "You don't have to be, you know," he said. "This is a hard time for everyone. It's not selfish of you to be hurt by it too."

Bucky pondered that for a moment. He supposed Erskine was right. More than one person was allowed to be sad at a time. Because he _was_. "It's just not fair," he said at last. If Erskine heard the tiny waver in his voice, he didn't comment on it. "Why would they do something like this?"

Erskine shook his head. "To minds like these, human lives are currency in a bid for power. The suffering of others is nothing to them, because the others are wrong, and so they do not matter." He sighed.

"Did you ever get to meet Mrs. Rogers, sir?" Bucky asked.

Erskine shook his head. "I never had the pleasure."

"Steve's pop, he died before Steve was born," Bucky said. "She had to take care of him all on her own. She worked real hard at the hospital, and they never had a lot of money, but she always took care of Steve, and she always took care of me, and she always took care of anybody who needed it. Everybody in the neighborhood loved her. She always had something nice to say to everyone. And if you had a problem, she really cared about it, and tried to help you fix it." His voice cracked as tears welled in his eyes again. "How can they think someone like that doesn't matter?"

"I don't know, James," Erskine said sadly. "There is no man so dangerous as one who cannot see the value in others. That is why they must be stopped."

"The Healer said this was a spell they hadn't seen before," Bucky said. "Was this…was this Hydra?"

Erskine looked down at him in surprise. "How do you know about Hydra?"

Bucky shrugged. "You hear things around school. They say they're really dangerous dark wizards, part of Grindelwald's followers."

"They are indeed," Erskine confirmed. "A rather…extreme branch of Grindelwald's cadre. And not one he appears to have a great deal of control over."

"They want a wizard war, don't they?" That was the only way Bucky could see people like that ever being in charge—if everyone else was wiped out. The war that was already raging would get much worse once magic got involved.

"Yes," Erskine said sadly. "And I'm afraid it's just a matter of time."

"It's not fair that Mrs. Rogers has to die for that," Bucky said, looking back to his friend. His voice wavered again, whether with anger or sorrow, he couldn't tell.

"No, it isn't," Erskine agreed.

* * *

Steve spent the rest of the day by his mother's side. Her cough was growing progressively worse, sounding more painful and bringing up more blood. He didn't know what to do to help her stop hurting, and that hurt almost as much as knowing she was going to die. She was sleeping more too, and fear tightened in Steve's chest every time she shut her eyes, not knowing if it would be the last time. He knew it would be easier for her if she went in her sleep, but he couldn't stop himself from praying that she would wake up so he could see her again.

Every moment she was awake felt monumental, as if Steve should be saying something significant, deep enough to make the time really count. More often than not, he couldn't think of anything to say. His ma didn't seem to mind. She held him and sang softly to him, told him stories about his father and things she remembered from when he was young. It felt selfish to have her last moments be spent comforting him, but when he finally managed to put that into words, she was having none of it.

"Nonsense," she huffed. "There is nothing I would rather be doing right now." She stroked his hair gently. "I'm not the one who needs comforting anyway." She coughed. "In a little while, I'll be fine. Better than I've ever been. I'm not the one who has to stay behind." She kissed Steve's forehead. "I'm so sorry I have to leave you here, sweetheart."

"It's not your fault, Ma," he said.

"It's not yours either."

Steve shook his head, not really surprised she knew what he'd been thinking. She always knew. "Maybe if I wasn't at school, if I'd stayed here—"

"Stop that," his mother chided. "This would have happened if you'd been at home or not. And if you'd been here, well…" She stroked his cheek.

Steve nodded. If he'd been here, he would have gotten it too. And he didn't have Sarah Rogers' stamina. She still would have died, but she would have had to watch her son die first.

"I just…I wish…" he sniffed, swallowing down the waver in his voice.

"I know," she said gently.

"Ma, what am I going to do?" he said shakily, tears pooling in his eyes. His focus since getting here had been solely on her, but fear had been slowly gnawing its way to the front of his mind and he couldn't push it back anymore. He wanted to be brave for her, but he was so scared. "Please, don't leave me," he whispered.

His ma wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, tucking his head underneath her chin and rocking him gently as he tried not to cry. "I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry," she whispered. "But you're going to be okay. You know how I know?"

Steve sniffed and shook his head.

"I know because of all the people I've met in all my life, I've never met anyone stronger than you. Life hasn't always been kind to you, but you're still here. You fight and you work and you don't give up, and you can still smile and laugh and care about other people, and that…" She patted his chest above his heart. "That's the kind of strength that will get you through anything. It doesn't mean you can't hurt, and it doesn't mean you can't cry, or even fall apart—it means that after you've done that, you can pick those pieces up again and pull yourself back together and stand back up. That's the kind of strength you've always had."

"I'm scared, Ma," he whispered.

"I know," she nodded. "And that's okay too. But you've still got people here who love you. When you get scared, remember that you're not alone. And it's not going to feel like it right now, but one day, it will get better. One day, that smile that lights up a room will come back." She kissed the top of his head. "I'll be watching for it."

Something settled a little bit in Steve's chest. He sat up and wiped at his eyes, nodding his head. He smiled down at his ma and she smiled back.

"There it is," she whispered. She reached up a hand to brush his cheek. "I've always loved that smile."

He reached up and grabbed her hand, pressing it to his cheek. "I love you, Mama," he said softly, the words suddenly tight in his throat.

"I love you too, Steve."

She smiled and sighed deeply, blinking slowly. Steve's breath caught in his chest as her hand went slack in his, and he watched her eyes flutter and close. He waited for another sigh, another breath to rise in her chest…but it never came.

"Ma?" he breathed. Tears pooled in his eyes again, spilling down his cheeks. "Ma, please," he whispered. "Don't go, Ma, please, not yet. Ma!" He squeezed her hand tightly. There was no response. "Mama?" It was barely a breath, a broken little sound of sorrow. She was gone.

* * *

_If you're not terribly angry with me for leaving you on this note, I'd love to know what you thought of this one. The story continues on Friday._


	12. A Long Way Down

_Alright, let's pick it back up where we left off. Poor little Steve has got a lot to try to handle.  
_

* * *

Bucky sighed, staring up at the ceiling through the darkness. They hadn't been home very long—it had been just after sunset when Mrs. Rogers died. Bucky had returned to his seat at the window, then was shaken out of his daze by the sound of a chair falling over as Steve jumped up and ran out of the ward. He'd gotten up and gone after him, finding him curled up in a little ball under a stairwell.

They'd all come home—no one had felt much like talking or eating dinner, so they all just went to bed. Bucky had hugged his ma extra tight before saying goodnight. Now he was in bed, staring at the ceiling and nowhere near falling asleep. He'd offered Steve the bed, but Steve had said he was fine and he didn't want to be any trouble. Bucky had insisted that he wasn't, but Steve had just dropped down onto the couch cushions on the floor and pulled the blanket up over his head. That had been an hour ago. Bucky could tell he wasn't asleep yet either.

Watching the reflections of the moonlight drifting across the ceiling, Bucky wondered why the universe thought it was okay to do this to Steve. He'd never even gotten to meet his father. He was sick all the time and was always getting hurt. People treated him like an afterthought, or worse, a punching bag. His ma was all he had, and now she was gone too. It wasn't fair.

Well, Bucky thought. That wasn't quite true. His ma wasn't _all_ that he had. He had Bucky. And Bucky had no intention of going anywhere. Uncertainty of what to do in the face of his friend's grief dissolved into resolution—he didn't have to _do_ anything, he just needed to be here. He rolled over to the side of the bed, looking down at the little huddle of blankets on the floor trembling softly in the moonlight.

"Steve?" he asked.

Steve sniffed but said nothing.

Bucky reached down to touch him, brushing away the blanket that was covering his face. It was wet with tears. "Aw, Stevie," Bucky breathed. He sat up a little, tugging on Steve's arm. "Get up here."

Sniffling, Steve allowed himself to be pulled up onto the bed. They'd probably been ten last time they'd shared a mattress. Steve hadn't grown much since then, but Bucky had, and it was kind of a tight fit, even with Steve curled up into a little ball that was small even for him. Bucky didn't mind. Steve needed to not be alone more than either of them needed to be comfortable.

"I'm so sorry, Steve," he said, tucking the blanket up over his friend and leaving his arm draped across his shoulders. He knew Steve had been hearing that a lot. He wasn't sure what else to say.

Steve nodded, and for a little while, neither of them said anything. "I wish I could tell you it was okay," Bucky said sadly. He knew it wasn't. He couldn't imagine how much this hurt.

"I know," Steve whispered.

"It will be, though," Bucky said. "Not now, I, I know that. But one day." The words hadn't come out the way he'd intended them to, and he didn't think it sounded very encouraging, but to his surprise, he heard a watery laugh from Steve. "What?" he asked.

"Ma said something like that," Steve said softly.

So, maybe the words hadn't come out right, but it had been the right thing to say. "She was a smart lady," Bucky said, wincing at how easily it came, referring to her in the past tense.

Steve nodded. "Yeah."

"She say anything else?"

"She said I wasn't alone," he said quietly. It wasn't a question, but the need for confirmation still hung in the air.

"You're not," Bucky said vehemently. "You've got me. I know I'm not her, but you've got me and you're always gonna have me. I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal."

Steve turned enough for Bucky to see a small, grateful smile. "Thanks," he whispered. He sniffed and shivered, curling up a little tighter and pulling in closer to Bucky as he did so. "I miss her, Buck," he said shakily.

"I miss her too, Steve."

As if that was what he had been waiting for, that acknowledgement that he wasn't alone in his grief, Steve sighed deeply and Bucky felt the tension drain out of his body. He patted his shoulder, listening as Steve's breaths grew deeper and more even as he fell asleep before allowing his own eyes to shut.

* * *

Steve didn't really remember much about the funeral. He sat up in the front between Bucky and Mrs. Barnes, and he didn't think he cried. He just felt sort of numb. He'd stood out by the gravestone a long time, even after everyone else had left. He didn't notice that it was raining until a large coat settled over his shoulders and Bucky's arm across his back steered him to the car.

It was later that evening when Mr. Barnes came and found him. He was in Bucky's room, the two of them talking quietly. They both looked up as he entered the room. "Steve? Why don't you come with me, son? I'd like to talk to you about something."

Steve nodded and got to his feet, suddenly feeling nervous when he saw Mr. Barnes nod for Bucky to stay behind. He wondered what this was about.

"Let's take a walk," Mr. Barnes said. They went outside, heading down toward the street. It had stopped raining. Everything was damp and the air was uncomfortably thick and warm. They walked a little way in silence until they arrived at the garage behind the building where Mr. Barnes kept his car. Steve and Bucky had only ever been allowed in under supervision—Mr. Barnes kept his tools there, and Steve remembered happy afternoons perched on the workbench or the hood of the car, watching as Mr. Barnes tinkered with the engine or some other part of the old machine.

Mr. Barnes sighed, as if unsure of where to begin. "I know you've probably heard this enough to last a lifetime," he said at last. "But, I'm sorry about your mother. She was a good woman."

Steve nodded. He _had_ heard it enough to last a lifetime. That had seemed to be all anyone at the funeral had been able to say.

"And I know it may seem a little, well, insensitive to discuss something like this so soon after the funeral, but I didn't want to wait to put your mind at ease."

"Sir?" Steve wasn't sure what exactly had prompted this or where it was going.

Mr. Barnes smiled gently. "If that furrow in your brow got any deeper, I could plant carrots in it." That got an unexpected smile out of Steve. "I know this is a hard time for you, son, and I know you've got a lot of things on your mind," he continued. "I just want to make sure you know that worry about your future doesn't need to be one of them."

"How do you mean, sir?" Steve asked. Because he _had_ been worried about his future. He didn't know what he was going to do. He had no money—he couldn't keep going to school, and couldn't pay the rent to keep staying at home. He was only thirteen and was scrawny and skinny and sort of pitiful to look at—it's not as though anyone was going to give him a job. He'd been trying very, very hard not to think about the orphanage over by the church.

Mr. Barnes rested a large, warm hand on his shoulder. "I mean," he said kindly. "That you'll be staying with us."

"Really?" Steve said, looking up. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it, hoped for it, but he hadn't wanted to presume. People kept saying the Depression was over, but times were still tough. The last thing he wanted was to be a burden to anyone.

"Of course," he told him, squeezing his shoulder. "We told your mother we'd take care of you, and you've always been a part of our family, Steve. I'm sorry it had to make itself more permanent this way, but you're always welcome with us."

"Thank you, sir, but I, I couldn't—" Steve protested, more out of habit than anything else. An extra mouth to feed—even one as small as Steve's—plus the added expense of clothes, medicine and school…It was a lot to ask of anyone.

"Yes, you could," Mr. Barnes said. "And you will." He studied Steve's face. "You're worried about the money, aren't you?"

Steve blushed, but gave a small nod.

Mr. Barnes nodded. "We may have to make a few changes, but it's nothing we aren't happy to do. We're hardly going to send you to the orphanage to save ourselves a few dollars. So, you put that thought right out of your head, you understand me?" He shifted, leaning back against the work bench. "Your mother's left you her money as well," he added, a little uncomfortably. Steve supposed it generally _was_ bad taste to talk about money so soon after…well, after. He appreciated Mr. Barnes setting that convention aside to try to put his worry to rest. "So, if you're worried about things like school fees and such, it's taken care of." He looked down at Steve. "But even if it weren't, you've got a home with us, son," he said kindly.

A lump formed in Steve's throat and tears pooled in his eyes, though they were tears of gratitude this time instead of sorrow. "Thank you, sir," he whispered. It was all he could manage. Mr. Barnes nodded and tugged him forward, hugging him tightly. His ma had said he wasn't alone, and although his grief and fear kept trying to keep him from seeing it, she was right.

"You're not alone in this world, Steve," Mr. Barnes told him, taking a step back to look at him. "And you're not going to be. But, sometimes…" He trailed off as he pulled his hand from Steve's shoulder to search through his pocket. He found what he was looking for and returned his eyes to Steve. "Sometimes a man needs some time to himself. Especially in a time like this. There's a lot to think through." He held out a little silver key. "If you ever find yourself needing some space to sort through your thoughts, you can come down here."

Steve looked up as he pressed the key into his palm. "Alone?" he asked. He'd never been allowed in the garage alone before. This was an enormous privilege. One Steve wasn't sure he was ready for.

Mr. Barnes nodded. "You're old enough to be in here on your own without making a mess. In fact," he added. "Come and have a look at this." He led Steve around the back of the car and pulled an old tarp off of something in the corner. It looked like it had, at some point, been part of a motorcycle. "I found this a few years ago. Kept meaning to fix it up and never got around to it. So, if you want to take a shot at it..."

Steve's mouth dropped open and he made a sputtering sort of noise, unsure of what to say.

Mr. Barnes chuckled. "It's just going to get thrown out if you don't want it. If you do, well, having something to do with your hands can be a good way of getting your mind to settle."

"That's very kind of you, sir," Steve said, having finally found his voice at last. "I think I…" He looked at the rusted pile of parts in the corner. It was going to be a lot of work. "I think I would like that."

Mr. Barnes smiled and nodded. "The tools are over there on the wall. They're clean when they come down, so they'd best be clean when they go up."

Steve nodded quickly. "Of course, sir. Thank you, sir."

Mr. Barnes patted his back and steered him toward the door. "Now, Mrs. Barnes should have dinner ready right about now. Let's not keep her waiting."

Steve clenched his fingers around the key in his hand, staring at it as Mr. Barnes locked the garage back up. "Thank you, Mr. Barnes," he said softly. The little key was so much more than just a key to the garage.

Mr. Barnes smiled warmly and clapped a hand to his shoulder. "You're welcome, Steve," he replied. "Let's go home."

* * *

When they'd left Hogwarts a few days ago, they'd been in the middle of studying for end of term exams. After Mrs. Rogers' funeral, it was only another day until Easter Break, so Bucky and Steve just stayed home. In the back of his mind, Bucky wondered if they'd have to take the exams when they got back.

The evening after the funeral, Steve had come back from his walk with Bucky's pop looking like a weight had lifted off his shoulders and said he was going to be living with them now. Bucky hadn't realized Steve had been worried about that—sure, his parents hadn't actually _said_ anything about it since the hospital, but Bucky had just assumed that was what was going to happen. There was no way they would've just sent Steve to the orphanage. He was kind of hurt that Steve had thought that they might, but he reminded himself that his best friend's world had just gotten flipped upside down and he had a hell of a lot on his mind. He was entitled to be freaked out and confused right now.

They'd gone back to Steve's apartment the next day to help him pack up his things. That had…Well, that had been a pretty awful day. They'd packed up all of Steve's clothes and his medicine and all the stuff in his room. Bucky's pop and Mr. Kowalski had taken his bed apart and driven it over to the Barneses' apartment and set it up again in Bucky's room. Bucky's ma and Becky had gone through Mrs. Rogers' things, boxing up her clothes to take down to the church charity closet. Steve figured that's what she would have wanted. She didn't have a lot of jewelry, but Bucky's ma packed up what there was and put it in a little box with all the photographs to give to Steve. The rest of the furniture had been sold, and people from the neighborhood came in and out all day to pick it up and offer Steve their condolences.

Steve, though it was his home they were packing up, had not been particularly involved in the process. He sort of drifted around the apartment, picking things up and putting them down again, or just staring off into space. He'd nod or shake his head when Bucky asked about things he wasn't sure if he wanted to keep, not actually saying anything. He disappeared around the same time some men came to take the couch, leaving the tiny living room looking uncomfortably empty. It took Bucky a while to find him.

"Hey, Steve," he said. "You okay?" It was a stupid question—of course, he wasn't okay—but he couldn't think of a better way to ask it.

Steve was sitting in the corner of the pantry in the kitchen under the tall shelf on the bottom, knees pulled up to his chest. It took him a minute to look up when Bucky opened the door. He wasn't crying, but he didn't look too far off from it. He shook his head.

Bucky lowered himself to sit on the floor beside Steve with some difficulty—he didn't fit under the shelf as well as Steve, and he couldn't tuck his knees up tight enough for his feet to let the door shut all the way. "Can I help?" he asked. He didn't really know what he could do, but he was willing to give it a shot.

Steve sniffed and gave a half-hearted shrug. "I don't know," he said softly. "I…" He sighed, sniffed again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I just don't wanna watch them take everything away. It's like…It's like…I know she's gone," he whispered, voice wavering. "But when everything was here, I could pretend like maybe she was still here. Like the house was just waiting for her to come home. But it's all gone now and she's not…she's not coming home," he finished, and his voice broke and he leaned forward into his knees, hiding his face.

Bucky looped his arm around Steve's little shoulders and pulled him to lean against him, holding on to his friend as he cried. Bucky's eyes weren't exactly dry either. Steve was right—there was just something so _final_ about seeing everything go.

"I'm sorry," Steve said abruptly, pushing away from Bucky and sitting up, wiping hastily at his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's—I know it's stupid, I—"

"It's not stupid, Stevie," Bucky said quietly. It was his life. It had already fallen apart, and now he was watching people pick up the pieces and take them away instead of putting them back together. Steve looked up at him and Bucky tried to look sincere, hoping Steve would believe him. Steve nodded, and a tiny, grateful smile crossed his lips before he sighed and leaned back into Bucky's shoulder.

"Everything's just all…" Steve sighed.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed.

They sat there for a while, and Bucky wondered if he shouldn't be saying something, using his voice to drown out the sound of feet walking back and forth, but Steve seemed content to sit there in silence, just leaning on his friend.

Bucky would have been fine to sit there until everything was gone, but his ma called them for lunch and his stomach rumbled, and Steve looked up at him. "Hungry?" he asked, a ghost of his old smile on his face.

"Apparently," Bucky said, and Steve's tiny smile got a little bit bigger. "You want me to bring you something?"

Steve shook his head, pushing himself off Bucky's shoulder and to his feet. "No. I should come out and…I'll come."

Bucky nodded, climbing a little more awkwardly to his own feet and trying not to hit his head on the shelf. His ma and Becky were getting out sandwiches and lemonade, and they all sat in a circle on the floor in the living room and ate. A memory popped into Bucky's head of him and Steve, maybe seven years old, fastening a blanket to the window and tucking the edges down the back of the couch to make a fort. They were eating crackers and scribbling on some old paper, making a treasure map. Icy January rain was beating against the window above them, but the room couldn't be cozier—Mrs. Rogers was baking in the kitchen, and the heat from the oven and the delicious smell of fresh bread was rolling through the tiny apartment. Something smooth and jazzy was playing on the radio, and Mrs. Rogers was dancing as she worked, humming along with it. Steve was humming too, absently bobbing his head along with the music as he drew. A lump rose up in Bucky's throat, and he had to try to swallow several times before he could get the last of his sandwich down. He cast a sideways glance at Steve, who looked just as lost in thought as Bucky felt. He wondered what he was remembering.

When everything was packed up or taken away, Bucky stood next to Steve in the empty living room. The walls were bare, the floor seemed vast in its emptiness, and Bucky didn't think he'd ever seen a place look sadder. Steve was looking around the room, his eyes drifting from wall to wall, down to the doors and windows. He looked like he was looking for something. Whatever it was, he didn't look sure if he wanted to find it.

"Hey, Buck," he asked carefully. "Do you…" His eyes were still roaming the room. "Do you think…" He sighed and shook his head.

"What is it, Steve?"

Steve looked down, blushing a little. "Can people who don't have magic become ghosts?" he asked quickly, embarrassed to ask the question but desperately wanting to know the answer all the same.

So that's what he was looking for. Bucky's voice caught in his throat and his mouth moved soundlessly for a moment, unsure of what he should say. He didn't really know how ghosts worked. And he didn't know if…The idea of Mrs. Rogers being a ghost was unsettling.

"I don't know, Stevie," he said softly.

"They can," Bucky's ma said from the front door. She was looking at Steve sadly. "Magic has no bearing on someone becoming a ghost or not. People become ghosts when they die and they're too afraid to move on."

Steve took a moment to absorb that information, then nodded. "She's not here," he said. He looked up at Bucky, sort of smiling. "She wouldn't be afraid."

Bucky nodded back. Steve was right—Mrs. Rogers wouldn't've been afraid. He wasn't sure if that was good news for Steve or not.

Steve drew in a deep breath and nodded again. "That's good, that—I wouldn't want her to be a ghost. Not really. She…well, she'd be stuck here forever, wouldn't she?" he asked, looking up at Bucky's ma, who nodded slowly. "I wouldn't want that to happen to her," Steve said softly. "She's with dad now, and she…" His voice cracked. "She'll be happy there." His lip wavered and he scrunched up his face, trying not to cry. "I just thought maybe I'd see her one more time," he whispered.

Before Bucky could say anything, his ma had crossed the room and thrown her arms around Steve. A miserable little moan escaped Steve's throat and he buried his face in her shoulder, his shoulders shaking as he started to cry. His ma didn't say anything, just held him tightly and stroked his hair, and Bucky's stomach twisted itself into a nauseating knot as it hit him that Steve was never going to get to hug his ma again. Bucky's ma wasn't the same, but she was the closest thing to a mother Steve was ever going to have again. He hoped that helped instead of making it hurt more.

The rest of the break passed quietly. Steve slept a lot more than he usually did, and he spent a lot of time down in the garage—Bucky's dad had given him a key, and Steve had told him about the old motorcycle down there. He thought that was a really nice thing of his pop to do, and he hoped it was helping. He didn't like for Steve to go off and spend so much time on his own.

"It's okay, Bucky, really," Steve told him. "I just need to think about stuff." He smiled a little. "You can come down and check on me if you want. I promise I won't get into trouble."

Bucky smiled at that. He didn't think Steve was going to get into any trouble, but he took him up on the offer and checked on him a lot anyway. And it seemed like it was working. Steve always seemed more settled when he came back from the garage. (He also came back dirtier and with cuts all over his hands. He always spent a portion of the evening soaking his hands in a bowl of warm water mixed with a potion Bucky's ma put in to keep anything from getting infected. Steve had never had tetanus before, and Bucky was hoping they would keep it that way.)

Becky had always had a clingy side—when Bucky was home and they would sit around reading or talking quietly and listening to the radio in the evenings, she would always snuggle up against her brother's side. She hadn't said much to Steve since he'd moved in, but after he'd been there for a few days, instead of sitting by Bucky, she would hop up on the couch next to Steve and slowly work her way over until she was snuggled up against him. The first few nights she moved carefully, like she was afraid she'd scare him off, but Steve never seemed to mind. He always seemed a little surprised, but then he'd smile and just move a little so she could lean on him more comfortably.

"Do you mind, Jay?" she asked him one night when Steve had gone to brush his teeth.

"Mind what?" Bucky asked.

She shifted a little uncomfortably. "That I'm not sitting with you anymore. I just, I thought maybe, well, it's real sad, about Mrs. Rogers, an' I don't really know how to help Steve feel better, but I thought maybe…"

Bucky smiled and put a hand on her shoulder, cutting her off before she could ramble too far. "I think it's nice," he told her. "And I think right now Steve needs some munchkin snuggles more than I do." He grinned. "That doesn't mean I don't get _any_, though," he told her, and he grabbed her and she squeaked and threw her arms around him and hugged him back. "You're a sweet kid," he told her, scooping her up so she sat on his hip. She was too big for it, but he kept her up for a minute, resting his forehead against hers and looking her in the eye. "And you are helping." He kissed her on the forehead and put her down. "Thank you."

She smiled, then her eyes drifted to the bathroom door and her smile faded. "Is Steve gonna be okay?" she asked.

"He will be," Bucky assured her. "He'll be sad for a while—just like you would be if something happened to our ma." She nodded seriously. "But we're gonna take care of him, and he's gonna be okay," Bucky told her.

* * *

In the days since his ma died, time seemed like it had slowed down, and sometimes even stopped completely, but the end of Easter break was there before they knew it. Steve wasn't sure if he was ready to go back to school, but maybe it would be good for him to get out of Brooklyn for a while. The Barneses had been just wonderful, but everything in the neighborhood seemed to remind him of his ma, and he thought maybe it wouldn't hurt so much at Hogwarts.

He stood a little awkwardly to the side on the platform as Bucky hugged his parents goodbye, but then someone's hand reached out and tugged Steve into the hug as well. Something warm expanded in Steve's chest. Maybe his home was different now, but he still had one. Like his ma told him, he wasn't alone. He relished the feel of Mrs. Barnes' arms around him—not his ma's arms, but still a mother's embrace. Still loving and warm and safe. Gratitude welled up in his chest, and he smiled as they all broke apart.

Mrs. Barnes took his face in her hands and gently kissed him on the forehead. "If you need anything, dear, just write and let us know, alright?" she said softly, brushing his hair back behind his ear.

"Yes'm," he replied. "Thank you." He looked up at Mr. Barnes. "And thank you. I—" He wasn't sure how to finish, but Mr. Barnes smiled and nodded and clapped him on the shoulder.

Steve pulled back so Bucky could kiss his ma goodbye, and Becky moved with him, seemingly attached to his hip. "I'll miss you, Steve," she said.

"I'll miss you too," he told her. She'd always been kind of like a little sister anyway. He wasn't sure if she'd been trying to be subtle, but he'd caught on pretty quickly to what she'd been trying to do back at the house, when she'd snuggle up to his side in the evenings instead of her brother's. It was sweet, and it was hard not to be cheered up by it. "Thanks for all the hugs," he said. "But I think you're gonna have to let go so I can get on the train."

She grinned, squeezed him tight, and let him go. The whistle sounded and he moved to get on board. Becky was wrapped around Bucky's torso now, and he extricated himself with some difficulty before hopping up the stairs after Steve. They leaned out the window to wave goodbye, heads hanging out into the air until the train left the station and they were lost in a cloud of steam.

"Hey, guys," Gabe greeted them, sticking his head out from a compartment a few doors down. "We've got more seats in here," he said, nodding towards the compartment. He vanished back inside and Bucky looked down at Steve.

"You good?" he asked.

Steve drew in a breath and nodded, squaring his shoulders back. "Yeah." He looked up at Bucky. "D'you think they know?" He'd wondered what they'd told everybody back at school when they'd left and hadn't come back.

"Dunno," Bucky said. "I could tell 'em not to ask," he offered. "Or, if you want, I'll tell 'em what happened, if you'd rather not…"

Steve considered. It was nice of Bucky to offer—it just moved the uncomfortable task from Steve to Bucky, and he appreciated his willingness to do that. And he didn't know if he could stand more people looking at him like they felt sorry for him. He sighed. It'd have to come out some time, though. "No," he said at last. "But, thanks. I'll just…I'll just wait and see if they ask, and if they do, I'll, well, I'll tell 'em."

Bucky put a hand on Steve's shoulder and squeezed it tightly. He'd step in if Steve needed him to. Steve smiled up at him and nodded and grabbed his bag.

Dugan, Gabe and Jim were lounging in the compartment. They moved to help the two of them stow their bags away. An awkward silence followed, and Steve got the feeling they knew what had happened and weren't sure if they should say anything or carry on. "How, uh, how were exams?" he asked, taking pity on them. Still kind of awkward, but maybe they could power through.

"Alright," Jim answered a little too quickly, seemingly glad someone else had spoken first. "Potions was killer, but, uh, not bad over all."

"Monty got bit by a pixie in the Care of Magical Creatures exam," Dugan offered. "His hand turned all green and everything. He didn't pass that one." That got a laugh out of everyone, and things almost felt normal until it died away and the uncomfortable silence returned.

Steve sighed. He was going to have to bring it up. He swallowed down a lump in his throat. These guys were nice enough not to ask, but not everyone would be. He was gonna have to be able to do this. He could do this. "Listen, guys," he began. He swallowed and cleared his throat, and his voice came back a little steadier. "You don't have to be all…all serious and stuff cause of me or anything."

They all looked a little guilty, but nodded. "Sorry, Steve," Gabe said. "I…Well, I'm real sorry for what happened." Dugan and Jim nodded, murmuring their agreement.

"Thanks," Steve said, nodding and swallowing down another lump in his throat. Bucky scooted over closer to him. "Thanks, guys. I don't—" He swallowed again against his tightening throat. He didn't want to cry. Not here. Crying in front of Bucky was one thing, but… "I'm okay," he told them. "I am, I just, I don't really want to talk about it," he said.

"Sure," Gabe said. "Yeah, that's, that's cool. You, uh, you guys catch the Falcons game last week?" he asked. The Falcons were the New York state Quidditch team. Gabe hadn't known about Quidditch prior to learning about magic, but had followed them closely as soon as he'd learned they had a team. His parents hadn't known about magic before either, but had gone out and bought a wizard radio. His dad might just be a bigger fan of Quidditch than Gabe was now.

"Uh uh," Steve replied, gladly seizing on the change of topic. "Who'd they play?"

Gabe launched into a play-by-play of the game, with frequent interruptions from Dugan (they'd played his home state team of Massachusetts). Jim didn't care for either team, so he made snarky comments throughout. Bucky kept shooting worried glances over at Steve, and Steve nodded and gave him a little smile to let him know this was okay. This felt normal.

Gabe's recount of the game took them most of the way to London, and though the other guys cast the occasional uncertain glance in Steve's direction, the tension seemed to have lifted from the compartment. By unspoken agreement, no one really mentioned what they'd done over the Easter holidays—conversation instead turned to the exams they'd taken, speculation about next term, and the new baseball season. The mood hitched a little when Monty and Jacques got on the train—Monty clearly wasn't sure what the protocol was, but took his cue from everyone else and carried on, and Jacques nodded at him and clapped his shoulder and didn't say anything. Of everyone on the train, Jacques got where he was coming from better than anyone. There was deep sympathy in his eyes as well as understanding that he just wanted things to be normal now, and Steve appreciated them both.

After lunch they sat on the floor and played cards. At some point Steve fell asleep. When he woke up on the bench seat, he couldn't remember if he'd moved up there or not. Bucky had definitely covered him up with his coat.

The whistle sounded and the brakes squealed as the train came to a stop, jarring the rest of the boys back to life. They got their bags and traipsed off the train, a few of them still yawning. They filed out the gates to where the carriages were waiting to take them up to school, and Steve stopped so short that Bucky ran into him, knocking him over and grabbing his coat to pull him back up before he hit the ground.

"Whoa! Sorry, Steve! You okay?" he asked.

Steve said nothing for a moment, staring straight ahead. The carriages were no longer horseless. There were…Well, Steve didn't know what they were, but they were the creepiest things he'd ever seen. They _kind_ of looked like horses. They were black, and seemed to be just skin on skeletons, with giant bony wings stretched with wrinkled leather like a bat's. The skin that clung to the bones looked uncomfortably fleshy—like it had been flipped inside out before being stuck back on. The one tethered to the nearest carriage turned to look at them, and Steve let out a little yelp and jumped back a little bit. Its eyes were disproportionately large and milky white, glowing softly in the fading daylight.

"Steve, what's the matter?" Bucky asked from behind him, a hand on his shoulder.

"What…" Steve stammered. "What the hell is that?"

"What?" Bucky asked.

Steve tore his eyes away from the horse-thing to look back at him. "What do you mean, 'what?'—that!" He pointed at the thing.

"What are you talking about, Steve?" Bucky asked. He looked a little worried.

Steve looked around. No one else seemed to be reacting to whatever the hell those were. "Do you…do you not see them?"

The concern in Bucky's face deepened. "See what?"

Steve looked back at the thing. Was he the only one who could see it? That…that didn't seem right. Was it even there, or was he starting to see stuff?

"Tu t'interroges sur les chevaux?" Jacques asked, stepping down from the carriage.

"Yes!" Steve said, turning back to face him. He pointed back at the horse-thing. "You can see them too?"

"See what?" Bucky demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, oui," Jacques said at the same time. "Ils ont toujours été là."

"They've always been there?" Steve repeated. Jacques nodded, looking oddly sympathetic. "What are they? And why haven't I seen them before?"

"And why can't I see whatever the hell you guys are talking about?" Bucky asked. "Horses?" he asked, turning to Steve for clarification. "Are there invisible horses in front of this thing?"

"Invisible _demon_ horses," Steve said. "Seriously, you don't see them?"

"No," Bucky said. He moved forward with a hand out, like he was trying to touch it.

"No, Bucky, don't!" Steve warned. He still had no idea what these things were and what they could do.

"Non, non, c'est bon," Jacques said, waving for Bucky to continue. "Ils ne sont pas dangereux."

Bucky kept going and his hand hit the creature's flank. Steve flinched as it turned those creepy white eyes back to look at him and gave an impatient snort. "Whoa," Bucky said. He patted the side, as if confirming what he felt.

"Ils s'appellent des Thestrals," Jacques said.

"Thestrals?" Steve asked. He hadn't come across the name in _Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them_. "But what are they?"

Jacques launched into an explanation too rapid for them to follow. Gabe cut him off, leaning out of the carriage door. "He says they're like vulture horses. They fly, they eat dead things—not, like, people or anything," he clarified as Bucky backed away from it. "They hunt birds and rabbits and stuff and eat stuff that's already dead. Scavengers, you know."

"Can you see them?" Bucky asked Gabe.

"No."

"Why can only some people see them?" Steve asked.

"Um," Gabe said awkwardly, looking down at the ground. He looked back at Jacques, then back up at Steve apologetically. "You can only see them if you've…um…I mean, you have to, uh…" He sighed. "They're invisible unless you've seen someone die," he said sadly.

"Oh," Steve said quietly. That explained why Jacques had always been able to see them. That explained why he had never seen them before now. He looked back at the Thestral. "Okay."

"Sorry," Gabe said.

Steve shook his head. It wasn't Gabe's fault. Bucky wrapped an arm over his shoulders and steered him up into the carriage. "You okay?" he asked softly once they were seated.

"Yeah," Steve said, aware that his voice was awkwardly high. Jacques and Gabe were thoughtful enough to launch into a conversation in French on the other side of the carriage. (And Steve knew enough French now to know they weren't talking about him, which made him feel a little better.) "It's fine," he insisted, glad his voice sounded a little more normal this time. Bucky still looked worried, but he nodded and let it drop. It wasn't really okay, but it wasn't awful either. It's not like the subject of his ma was never going to come up again. He needed to be able to handle it.

* * *

They'd been back at Hogwarts for about two weeks now. Bucky had been hoping that getting away from Brooklyn for a while would be good for Steve. And he seemed to be…well, Bucky wouldn't go so far as to say okay, but he was making it. He drifted a lot—Bucky usually had to remind him when it was time to go to classes, or nudge him during lessons to bring his attention back. He usually had to remind him to eat, too. Peggy and Jim helped with that—the only real emotion he'd seen Steve show over the past two weeks was when Bucky tried to suggest that he could take a break from Quidditch practice for a while if Steve needed him to, and Steve had gotten angry and threatened to set his hair on fire. So, nights that Bucky had Quidditch, Peggy and Jim would find Steve from wherever he'd wandered and make him go to dinner. His magic was all over the place too—a lot more things exploded, caught fire or shot across the room, and even spells he knew rarely worked the way they were supposed to anymore. Then he'd get angry that nothing was working, and it would work even less, creating a nasty downward spiral.

But Steve was making it. He'd get on track in class and he would pay attention, answer questions, and throw himself into his homework. He didn't really initiate conversations, but he could be drawn into them and he would engage. He got up on his own in the mornings, and he could mention his ma without crying. He was getting there. Bucky wished there was something he could do to make it all better at once, but he knew things didn't work that way. (And what good was magic if it couldn't stop Steve from hurting?)

They had one more lesson before lunch today, and were heading down the stairs to go out to the grounds for Care of Magical Creatures. One flight of stairs to go, they ran into a crowd of older boys coming up the stairs, and one of them—a Ravenclaw, Bucky thought, but he didn't really know him. He might have been named Duncan—bumped into Steve as they rounded the corner, dropping the rolls of parchment he'd been carrying and sending Steve stumbling back into Bucky.

Bucky didn't hear whatever it was he snapped at Steve as he bent to pick his things up, but before Bucky knew what was happening, Steve had launched himself at the guy's neck with a howl and they were rolling down the stairs.

Students scrambled to get out of the way and pressed back in just as quickly to get a good view of the fight, and Bucky had a hard time pushing his way through the crowd. He caught a glimpse of Steve sitting on top of Duncan and pummeling him with his tiny fists. Someone taller moved in front of him, and Bucky could only follow the sound of fists meeting flesh, unable to tell who was hitting who. A very familiar, furious cry of pain told him Duncan had gotten over his initial surprise at being thrown down the stairs by a tiny, angry asthmatic and had started hitting back.

He kept shoving and finally broke through the front of the crowd in time to see Steve skid across the floor, leaving a bloody streak on the flag stones. Before Steve had even stopped moving, though, he was already rolling, pushing himself to his feet and grabbing a flower pot off the floor to hurl at Duncan's head. Not even Bucky had been expecting that move—Duncan certainly hadn't—and Duncan didn't have time to get out of the way, although he was tall enough that the pot hit his shoulder instead of his head, shattering and showering both of them with shards of pottery and dirt. Steve took advantage of Duncan's distraction to jump at him again and punch him in the mouth.

Duncan threw him off and Bucky shook off his surprise and jumped in, grabbing Steve as he stumbled away from Duncan and pulling him back.

"Lemme go, Bucky!" Steve yelled.

"No, Steve, wait—"

"Get the hell off me!" he shouted, elbowing Bucky in the side and wriggling out of his grip.

Bucky grabbed at his sleeve and someone was pulling at Duncan now, and before either of them could jump back into the fight, the voice of Professor Phillips boomed, "What the HELL is going on here?!" The room fell dead silent.

Phillips' expression got more and more dangerous the more of the scene he took in. Duncan was standing on one side of the circle of students, breathing hard, with bloody scrapes covering his face and hands, gingerly massaging the shoulder the flowerpot had hit. He was leaning a little to favor his left leg, covered in dirt and with shards of pottery embedded in his robes. Steve was breathing so raggedly—the way he did when his heart had gotten overworked—that Bucky was worried he was going to pass out, his little body shaking with anger. Under the liberal coating of blood and dirt, it was hard to tell how badly he was actually hurt, but Bucky had hold of his arms again and he was pretty sure that if he let go, Steve would hit the floor.

"I said," Phillips said, soft and dangerous. "What. The hell. Happened?" The onlookers were all slinking away, not keen to get caught up in the aftermath. Just then—because that was just what this situation needed, more teachers—Professor Erskine came in.

"Steven?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise at Steve's appearance. He turned to the other boy, looking equally surprised at the beating he'd taken. "Declan?" Okay, so not Duncan. Bucky had been close. "What's going on here?"

"That is exactly what I'm trying to find out, Professor Erskine," Phillips said. They both looked at Declan, who looked affronted.

"Don't look at me!" he protested. "That little maniac started it!" he said, pointing at Steve.

Erskine raised an incredulous eyebrow, and Phillips snorted dismissively. "You're telling me that _Rogers_ started this fight?"

"He did!" Declan insisted. "Knocked me down the stairs and threw a freakin' flower pot at my face!"

The look on Phillips' face when Steve said, "He's right. I did," was…well, not worth it, certainly, but it was pretty great.

"_You_ started this?" Phillips clarified, both he and Erskine looking at Steve in surprise.

"Yeah," Steve replied. He sniffed and spat a glob of blood and what sounded like a tooth onto the floor, still glaring at Declan.

"Steven, what possessed you to do something like this?" Erskine wondered. Bucky was wondering the same thing.

Steve went very still. "He called me a half-breed," he said in a hard voice. "He said I was a clumsy little mongrel and I…I'm not…He can't…I won't let him…" He was stumbling over his words he was so angry, tears of fury brimming in his eyes, and if Bucky didn't think he was all that holding Steve up right now, he would've let go to take a swing at Declan too. Steve had been brushing off that insult for three years, but Bucky knew exactly why it hit him so hard now.

Erskine and Phillips exchanged a look, and Bucky knew they got it too. "Get up to the infirmary and get cleaned up," Phillips said, nodding at Declan. "We'll discuss this later." Declan nodded and left, and Bucky was pleased to see him limping up the stairs. "Rogers…" Phillips sighed. He looked Steve up and down. "You gonna pass out?"

"No, Sir," Steve said.

Phillips nodded. "Come with us." Bucky moved to help him follow them, but Steve shook himself free of Bucky's grip. "Just Rogers," Phillips clarified, looking back at them.

Bucky stopped, surprised. "But…" he protested.

"You're already late to class," Phillips told him. "Go."

Bucky looked imploringly at Erskine, who looked sympathetic, but nodded. "He'll be alright, James."

Bucky looked at Steve, but he was staring at the floor. Steve grudgingly allowed Erskine to take his arm to support him as they walked away. Bucky stared after them, a worried knot twisting in his stomach. With a resigned sigh, he walked slowly out the door and down to the paddock where the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins were gathered around a baby unicorn.

Monty and Jacques looked like they were going to tease him about being late, but seemed to decide against it when they saw his expression. He just shook his head when they asked him what was wrong and where Steve was and pretended to be extremely interested in the unicorn. In reality, his thoughts were up in the castle, hoping Erskine was fixing Steve up, wondering what was happening, what was going on in Steve's head.

Not that he blamed him for going after Declan. If it'd been him, Bucky wouldn't've made it three years without taking a swing at someone as often as he knew Steve heard that one. And now…well, you didn't talk about a guy's ma that way whether she was alive or not. But especially not now. So, yeah, he totally got it. But what worried him was the rage on Steve's face, and the way he'd shut down after. Yeah, again, this was totally a call for being angry. But since coming back here, that's all Steve had been. Nothing or angry. And Bucky got it, but he didn't think it was good. He didn't know what to do about it, though.

Steve didn't appear until the end of lunch. He was clean, and appeared to be back in one piece. "Sorry for yelling at you," he said flatly.

"What? No, Steve, it's fine. Are you okay?" Bucky asked him.

"I'm fine."

"Steve—"

"I'm fine. Erskine fixed me up."

"Steve, I, I mean, I'm glad, but that's not—" Bucky swallowed, suddenly unsure of himself. "That's not what I meant."

Steve looked up at him. "I'm fine," he insisted. He was back to looking flat and emotionless again, but something sharp in his tone told Bucky to drop it.

"Okay," Bucky said uncertainly. "Did you get in trouble?"

"Detention." Bucky raised a surprised eyebrow. Steve shrugged one shoulder. "Erskine wanted to let it go, but Phillips didn't. It's fine. I don't care."

"Steve, I—"

"I'm fine, Bucky," Steve said again.

He wasn't. But Bucky nodded. He didn't know what else to do.

* * *

Coming back to Hogwarts hadn't really made things easier. Steve had thought it might—his ma had never been to Hogwarts, so it wasn't like there was anything here to remind him of her. He had his friends, he had his school work, and he thought that—like the motorcycle in Mr. Barnes' garage—that could help him focus his mind in a good direction. All it seemed to do, though, was just move the pain around. It might hurt less sharply here, but for whatever reason, it hurt more often. There was this dull ache in his chest, this fog in his brain all the time. He didn't know how to shake it.

Then one day, there was the incident with Declan. And all the anger that had been building up inside of Steve since the moment his ma said she wasn't going to get better—anger at Hydra for killing her, anger at the doctors for not saving her, anger at himself for not being able to do anything, anger at her for leaving, more anger (and a heaping portion of shame) at himself for being mad at her, anger at the world for carrying on, and anger at Declan and everyone like him—all that anger suddenly had a place to go. It felt good. And it felt…well, it _felt_. He hadn't felt much of anything in a while.

After the fight was over, there was the physical aftermath. It hurt like hell, but it was a whole different kind of pain than what he'd been carrying around in his soul. The anger and the pain distracted him from the loss more than anything else had since coming back. And so, a few days later, when the sorrow roaring in his chest threatened to tear him in half, he tried it again.

There were plenty of people at Hogwarts who picked on him. He used to make the effort to avoid them, but they were easy enough to find, and it didn't take much provocation to get things going. Ethan this time—oh, it was easy to pick a fight with Ethan—and he ended up spending the night in the infirmary afterwards. He didn't mind spending the night alone in here this time—the sharp pain of a broken collar bone was different, welcome even, and the still-smoldering embers of anger in his chest seemed to keep him warm, and kept away that cold, sorrowful ache.

A voice in the back of his head that sounded an awful lot like Bucky's pointed out that enjoying this anger and pain and seeking more of it out was probably a bad idea. He ignored it. Because if he wasn't angry, if he didn't have this physical pain to focus on, then it just hurt too much. It was stupid and he knew it, but he was so _tired_ of hurting like that. This was all he could figure out how to do.

And if being a tiny, sickly, goody-two-shoes, smart-aleck Irish kid in Brooklyn had taught him anything, it was how to piss people off. He wasn't good at much, but he was good at that.

As weeks passed, it got easier to do (and it got easier to ignore the voice that told him to stop). His anger bubbled up quicker than it used to. Things that he would have let pass before were infuriating now. And that was fine. Less work on his part to get things going.

He wondered sometimes, when Bucky would come up to see him in the infirmary, or wait with him while Nurse Rains fixed less-serious injuries up, he wondered if Bucky could tell these fights were different. (Obviously, he picked his fights when Bucky wasn't around. He didn't want Bucky getting hurt, for one thing. He didn't want Bucky stopping the fight too soon, for another.) The way Bucky looked at him, sometimes he wondered. But he never said anything. And if Bucky had known, he would have said something. He would have said _several_ things.

Tonight, it was a broken wrist and a cracked skull. It would be overnight again—usually the case with head injuries. Bucky was there, looking worried as he always did when Steve was hurt. Steve was in and out of consciousness, but he found himself feigning sleep when he was awake. He didn't want to talk to Bucky. He didn't want Bucky to know what was going on, but at the same time, he was hurt that Bucky hadn't figured it out. Bucky was supposed to know stuff like this. Did he not know him? Did he not see how much this hurt? His ma had said he wasn't going to be alone, but he sure felt that way. Maybe she was wrong. Because everything hurt and Steve was yelling at the world and it was hitting back, and Bucky was just sitting there, like this was some regular fight Steve had gotten into with some regular bully.

He heard Bucky sigh in the chair beside his bed. "I wish you would talk to me, Steve," he said softly. "I know you're awake."

Sure, he could figure _that_ out. He cracked an eye open. "What?"

"What's going on with you, Steve? This is the second time this week you've been up here. It's the third head injury you've had since we got back and the sixth broken bone." His voice wasn't accusing, but worried. Annoyingly gentle. Right now, Steve hated that.

"And?" Steve snapped. "This is my life, Bucky. I attract this kind of thing."

"Not like this."

"Yeah, like this. What, you're just noticing now?"

Bucky looked at him like he'd just slapped him. Steve should have taken it back—that was below the belt, suggesting Bucky not just _didn't_ care, but _hadn't_ cared, and it wasn't true. Shame churned in his stomach, morphing quickly into anger.

Bucky shook his head. "I don't…" He sighed, shook his head again. "Just talk to me, Steve. What do you need?"

His anger at himself came spilling out as sarcasm, curling his lip in a sneer. "I am talking to you. And what I _need_ is to get some sleep. Head injury, remember?"

"Steve—"

"Look, just leave me alone, alright?"

Bucky opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, nodding slowly. "Okay," he said quietly, looking hurt and trying to sound like he wasn't. "I'll just…" His shoulders sagged. "I'll see you in the morning, Steve. I hope your head feels better." He stood up and set something on the mattress, leaving without saying anything more.

Shame was still churning in his stomach, mixed with guilt now. He knew Bucky was trying to help. The guilt only intensified when he looked down to see what Bucky had left—his bathrobe, the one that kept him warm and made him feel better when he was in here. The one he hadn't even asked him to bring. He swiped a hand across his eyes, dashing away the hot, angry tears pooling there. Why was he being such a jerk to Bucky? And what right did Bucky have to be so nice to him when he was being so awful? It would have been so much easier if Bucky had just gotten angry back. If he had yelled at him. Because then Steve could have yelled back. He could have had a good reason to be angry. But he'd hurt Bucky, and Bucky had just taken it. And now Steve was angry and ashamed, and felt just awful.

He didn't want to be like this, but he didn't want to stop either—being angry and being hurt still felt better than the gaping hole in his chest. He didn't know how to dig himself out of this hole. And if he wasn't careful, he was gonna end up in the hole alone.

What was the matter with him?

* * *

_._


	13. Climbing Back Up

_Okay, so in an effort to prove I'm not totally heartless, I figured I shouldn't leave you with two intensely angsty cliffhangers in a row. So, here's a second chapter to get you through the weekend and hopefully offer some resolution.  
_

* * *

He knew it wouldn't help anything, but sometimes, Bucky just wanted to punch Steve in his smart mouth. Steve had been getting better—slowly, but he really had been—before the whole thing with Declan. He still thought the fight itself had been justified, but it was like at some point during the thing, a switch had been flipped inside of Steve, transforming him from a drifting, grieving teenager into a tiny but powerful ball of rage. He had a hell of a short fuse these days, and it took very little to set him off. And Bucky got that Steve was angry, but the scary part was how long it took for that anger to cool down after it flared up.

He'd been avoiding Bucky lately, too. He got into fights when he was off on his own, and yeah, that happened with Steve, but not like this. Not this often. And not this bad, either. Steve had been jinxed and hexed until he couldn't see straight, breaking out in boils or hives, growing antlers, scales or fur, losing fingernails, puking up slugs or being levitated and abruptly dropped back to earth, and he'd broken more bones this term than he had all three years he'd been here. Bucky had never been more grateful for magical healing in his life—if they were back home, Steve would be in a body cast by this point. He was seeking these fights out—that much was painfully obvious—and he seemed to be enjoying it—both the damage he was inflicting (which was considerable) and the damage he was taking (which was frightening). The only thing Bucky didn't know was if he was starting these fights or goading his opponent into doing it. It probably didn't matter too much either way. It was like…it was like he was in a boat watching Steve drowning but refusing to take his hand.

He couldn't talk to Steve about it. Every time he tried, no matter how he approached it, Steve either blew up or shut down (or both). He hadn't mentioned anything in his letters to his parents either. He wasn't sure how to say it, and it's not like they could do anything from Brooklyn anyway. All he could do was pick up the pieces when Steve got himself pounded into the paving stones, and he was sick of it.

Quidditch practice had gone late this evening, and Bucky didn't feel like going back to the common room just yet. He trudged toward the kitchen, figuring he could still get something to eat. The house elves never turned down a request for food, and he found himself looking forward to being around someone cheerful for a while.

"Master Bucky!" a high voice greeted him as he stepped through the wall. "Welcome! Sir is hungry again so soon?"

"Hey, Dapple," he said, greeting the smiling little elf. "Actually, I missed dinner…"

Dapple's already large eyes widened, scandalized, and she bowed low. "Do not worry, Sir! Dapple will take care of that! Wait here, Sir!" She bowed again and dashed away. Less than a minute later she was back, bearing a plate loaded with roast chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans.

"Thanks, Dapple, this looks great!"

She beamed. "I'm very happy to help, Sir, very happy. Is Sir requiring anything else?"

"Um," Bucky began. "Actually, yeah, is Winston here? I wanted to talk to him about something. I can wait if he's busy, though."

"Of course, Sir. I will find him." She hurried off into the crowd of elves bustling to and fro with dirty dishes and leftovers.

Winston appeared before Bucky had finished with the chicken. "Master Bucky!" he said happily. "Tis very good to see you. Sir is doing well, I hope?"

"Yeah, I'm alright," Bucky said, smiling at Winston's enthusiasm. "How are you?"

"Winston is very good, Sir, very good," he replied, looking pleased as always that Bucky had asked. "Dapple tells me that Sir has asked for me?"

Bucky nodded, not quite sure where to begin. He'd had this idea while he was walking down here, but he hadn't thought it all the way out yet. "Okay, um, you know my friend, Steve, right?"

"Of course, Sir," Winston said. "We hasn't seen him here for some time, though. He is well?"

"Um, well…no. Not, not really."

Winston's wrinkled brow furrowed. "He is ill?"

"No. He just…" Bucky wasn't sure how much to say. Not that it was a secret or anything, but it was Steve's business. "He's having a hard time right now," he settled on saying. Winston nodded, waiting for Bucky to continue. "The thing is," Bucky said after a moment. "He's been getting in a lot of fights lately. And I…well, I look out for him, you know?" Winston nodded again. "But lately, this all seems to happen when I'm not around, and he's been getting hurt pretty bad. It's all over before I know about it, and all I can do is check on him in the infirmary."

"How is Sir hoping that Winston can help?" the elf wondered.

Bucky sighed. "You guys are all over the castle, right?" Winston nodded. "I was hoping maybe if one of you saw something going on with Steve, you could come get me, so I could help."

"Of course, Master Bucky," Winston said quickly. "We can do this. I will tell all the elves. We shall watch for Master Steve."

Bucky gave him a relieved smile. "Thanks, Winston. I appreciate it."

"Of course, Sir," Winston said, nodding. "We understands. Loss is a difficult thing, and Master Steve, he grieves. Sir grieves too, I think," he said, giving Bucky a knowing look.

Bucky's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You know about Steve's ma?"

Winston nodded. "House elves is hearing many things, Master Bucky."

Bucky nodded. He supposed that didn't really surprise him. "Do you know how I can help him?" he asked, trying not to sound desperate.

Winston shook his head sadly. "We each of us grieves in our own way, Sir. Tis different, from one to one. Winston does not know what he needs. But Sir is helping him."

Bucky shook his head. "I don't think I am."

"Sir is wrong," Winston said gently. "Sir is caring for his friend, and when the sorrow is lifting, Master Steve will see so."

Bucky swallowed down an unexpected lump in his throat. He hoped Winston was right. "Thanks, Winston," he said softly. Winston nodded and smiled, patting his knee encouragingly. Bucky sighed, hopping down off the table he was sitting on and setting down his empty plate. "I should go before Study Hall. Thank you."

Winston bowed. "Sir is welcome. And we shall help Sir to watch for his friend."

Steve was in a bad mood when Bucky got back to the common room—no surprise there—so Bucky just did his homework and went to bed. He lay there in the dark for a while, staring up at the ceiling. He hoped Winston was right. He didn't know how else to help. And Steve kept pushing him away, which made it harder. It was taking more work to keep his own fuse from getting too short—if Steve was acting around other people the way he was acting around Bucky, it was little wonder he kept getting punched.

It was a couple of days later that he found out his house elf spy network was working. He was on his way to Astronomy—Steve had been kept behind in Transfiguration. Bucky had hung back by the door to wait for him and Steve had snapped for Bucky to leave him the hell alone—he could find Astronomy by himself. So Bucky did.

He'd only made it about two corridors when a tiny house elf appeared in front of him with a loud crack. "Gah!" he exclaimed, jumping and almost dropping his books.

Spangle bowed low, his drooping ears brushing the floor. "So sorry to startle Sir," he said quickly. "But Sir wished to be informed when Master Steve was in trouble."

"Yes," Bucky said quickly, recovering himself. "Yes, I did. Is he—where is he?"

"He is one corridor that way, Sir," Spangle said, pointing to the left. "By the bathroom."

"Thanks, Spangle!" Bucky called, already rushing off.

The bell was about to ring, so the corridors were mostly empty, giving Bucky space to pick up speed. He didn't slow down, using his momentum to grab the collar of that red-headed Slytherin who hated Steve (and who had gotten alarmingly huge since Bucky had last seen him last year) and hurl him off to the side. Steve really knew how to pick 'em. He was an idiot. If the red-headed kid didn't kill him, Bucky just might.

"Back off," Bucky warned, raising his wand as the kid got to his feet. He hesitated, like he was sizing Bucky up, and Bucky tightened his grip on his wand. "Try it," he hissed, and, wisely, the other guy decided not to. He left.

Steve got to his feet behind him, brushing dust from his hands. "I had him," he complained thickly through his profusely bleeding nose.

Bucky rounded on Steve. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded.

"Nothing," Steve snapped. "You got here in time," he said, sounding annoyed. "We should go to class, we're gonna be late."

"No!" Bucky declared, grabbing Steve's arm. He was sick and tired of this. He yanked Steve forward a few steps and shoved him into the bathroom, slamming the door behind them as he followed. "No, we are _not_ going to class! We are going to settle this. Right now."

"Settle what?" Steve demanded, surprise at Bucky's outburst already morphing into anger. Fine. Fine. If Steve wanted a fight, Bucky would give him one.

"Settle what?!" Bucky repeated. "You're not that dumb, Steve, you know good and well what I'm talking about!"

Steve moved to leave and Bucky flung his arms out, blocking the door. Steve pushed at him and Bucky pushed back, sending him stumbling back several steps. "Answer the question, Steve," Bucky growled. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

Steve glowered up at him. "You're so smart, you figure it out," he spat.

"Fine," Bucky said. "Fine. You wanna know what I think?"

"I feel like you're gonna tell me, whether I want you to or not."

"I think you're looking to get hurt. I think you got some sort of high out of that fight you got into with Declan. So you're finding someone dumb enough to start a fight and big enough to do some damage, because anything is better than nothing! You're sick of the way missing your ma hurts, and when someone beats the crap out of you, it's a different kind of pain and I think you like it! You want to be angry, and you want to be hurt, because you don't want to think about what happened to your ma!"

Steve was breathing hard, red rising in his cheeks as Bucky spoke. "Don't you talk about my ma!"

"Why, because you're the only one who cared about her?!" Bucky yelled back. "Yeah, she's gone and it sucks! Alright?! It's awful, but you're going down in flames, man! I don't want to lose you too!"

"Oh, suddenly you _care_?!" Steve shouted, face twisting in a snarl. "Now you say I'm going down in flames—how is this any different from what I've been doing all term?! Alone! Where the hell have you been?!"

"Where was _I_?" Bucky repeated. "Oh, don't you even—" He stopped, so angry he couldn't find the words he wanted. If Steve had been standing close enough, he would have hit him. "Where was I?" he said again. "I was right here, Steve. Right _freakin'_ here! Don't you _dare_ say I left you alone! I have been right here this whole time, and all you're doing is pushing me away! And I am sick and tired of it! I'm sick of being treated like this, and I'm sick of watching you do this to yourself! You're gonna get yourself killed!"

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't care!" Steve yelled back, angry tears streaming down his face.

"Did it ever occur to you that I do?!" Bucky shouted back. That seemed to bring Steve up short. Bucky pressed on, pulling in a deep breath to bring his voice back down. "You think I don't care what happens to you? You think it doesn't hurt, seeing you in bloody pieces in the infirmary? You think I don't wish there was _anything_ I could do to take away the pain I know is eating you alive?" He took a deep breath. Alright. All or nothin'. "You think your ma would've wanted this? If she could see what you were doing, what do you think she would say?"

Bucky knew he was dangerously close to crossing the line, and for a moment, Steve looked like he was going to hit him. About five different emotions—none of them good—fought for control of his face, twisting his mouth into hard, angry lines, then, all of a sudden, all the rage fell from his face and Steve dropped to the floor with a sob, pulling his knees up to his chest and hiding his face.

* * *

After a minute, Steve felt Bucky drop down on the floor next to him, and that only made him cry harder. Bucky had every right to leave, to storm out of here and never talk to Steve again. It was too much to hope for, and Steve knew he didn't deserve it, but he shuddered in relief when, a minute later, Bucky's arm draped over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Steve," he said quietly. "I shouldn't've—"

"No," Steve said, shaking his head but not lifting it. "You were right." He sniffed and coughed, choking briefly on the blood he forgot was still leaking from his nose. "You were right. Ma—" He stumbled over her name. If she could see what he was doing now…"She would hate it." His tears intensified as he thought of how ashamed she would be of how he was acting. He'd gotten so caught up, he hadn't stopped to think about that. He hadn't wanted to. But Bucky was right.

Neither of them said anything for a while. "I don't know how to stop," Steve whispered at last. He knew he needed to. But he didn't when it was easy, and now it was too hard.

"I know," Bucky replied. Steve heard him draw in a deep breath. "I can help you if you'll let me," he offered, not as confidently as Steve knew he wanted to sound, afraid of being pushed away again. It hurt knowing he was the one who'd made him sound like that—and it didn't hurt in the good way. "But you gotta let me in, Stevie."

Steve didn't say anything for a moment, unable to get his throat working. He finally managed to nod. "I know," he whispered. "I want to. I—" He stopped, choking on the words. "I'm really sorry, Bucky," he said, looking up at last.

Bucky was there, looking blurry through Steve's tears, but a small, kind smile was on his face. "It's okay, Steve," he said.

Steve shook his head. "No, it's not." He hadn't meant it, any of what he'd said. It had just been so much easier to be angry, and he'd tried to convince himself he had a reason so he could be angry at Bucky too, but he'd never believed it. And it was awful. It was the worst thing he could have said, that Bucky didn't care. Because Bucky always cared. Sometimes he was the only one that cared. Steve had been falling apart, and Bucky had picked up the pieces. And Steve was treating him like garbage. But Bucky was still holding on to all the broken pieces, even though they were sharp and they cut, just waiting for Steve to let him put them back together again.

He didn't deserve a friend like that.

"It's not okay," Steve said again. "You…" He sniffed and looked up at the ceiling, unable to look at Bucky anymore. "You've been great," he whispered. "I've been, just…" He couldn't find the words for what was going on in his head, and he waved vaguely, knowing Bucky would understand. "I don't know. Just everywhere. And you've been right here. And you've been amazing. And I shouldn't've…" He shook his head, shame coloring his cheeks. "I'm so sorry," he finished, his voice breaking.

Bucky tugged him over to lean on his shoulder and Steve let him, silent tears leaking from his eyes. "Listen, Steve," Bucky said after a minute. "I get it. I do. I mean, I don't get it exactly, 'cause, you know, it wasn't my…I mean…it didn't happen to me. But I get that it's messed up. I get that it hurts. I get that you feel all…everywhere. And it's cool if you're sad or angry or whatever, that's normal. You gotta…you gotta feel what you feel." He sighed, drawing in a deep breath.

"And, yeah, I would prefer it if you _didn't_ yell at me," Bucky continued. Steve felt his cheeks reddening, guilty tears burning hot in the corners of his eyes. Bucky jostled his head with his shoulder until he looked up at him. "But I can take it if you do," he said sincerely. "You got stuff you need to get out, I won't get mad."

Steve sighed and sat up, drawing a hand across his nose, grimacing as it came away covered in blood and snot. He opened his mouth, then hesitated—it seemed like they were fixing things, and Steve didn't want to push his luck. He needed Bucky, he knew that, he didn't want to push him away anymore, but he couldn't just leave this hanging. "You seemed pretty mad a few minutes ago," he said quietly. He didn't want to just offer a blanket apology—he needed to know how much damage he'd done.

Bucky's face fell and he looked down, giving a quick nod. "Yeah," he said softly. "But not because you yelled. You were trying to get yourself killed, Stevie, I…" He drew in a long breath. "Do you really think I didn't care?" he asked uncertainly, a slight waver in his voice.

"No," Steve said quickly, shaking his head. "No. I…I was being stupid. You were right, I wanted a fight, but you wouldn't give me one. But you didn't stop me."

Bucky looked stricken. "I tried, Steve," he said sadly, his eyes shining. "You wouldn't let me."

"I know," Steve replied. "I wanted you to stop me, so I got mad when you didn't, but I didn't really _want_ to stop either, so I got mad when you kept trying, and I kept trying to push you away so you _wouldn't_ stop me and I got mad that you wouldn't go, then you kept being nice to me, which made me feel bad, 'cause _I_ was being such a jerk, and that just made me madder, and I…" He wasn't explaining this well. He shook his head. "I don't know, I…" He sighed. "I'm sorry. I was an idiot."

A tiny smile tugged on one corner of Bucky's mouth. "Yeah, you were," he said.

Steve latched on to the smile, offering a small, hopeful one of his own in return. "Are we…I, I mean, I…"

Bucky put his arm back over Steve's shoulder. "We're good," he assured him. "End of the line, remember?"

"Even though I was trying to push you off the train?" Steve asked, only half-kidding. He still wasn't sure he deserved to be forgiven so quickly.

Bucky chuckled. "Can't get rid of me that easy, Steve."

Something warm purred happily in his chest, and Steve felt new tears prickle unexpectedly in his eyes—not guilty or angry or sad this time, but grateful. He didn't deserve a friend like Bucky, but the fact that he still had him was… "I'm glad," Steve said softly.

Bucky looked down at him and smiled, tugging him back in for a hug before standing and offering Steve a hand, which he took. "We're good," Bucky said again. "And next time you feel the need to smart-mouth your way into getting punched, you let me know, alright? I'll help you figure something out, but I'm not letting you get in any more fights." He was smiling, but Steve knew he meant it.

"Okay," he promised, and he meant it too. He knew his anger and that urge to punch the pain away weren't going to go away overnight, but if anyone could help him get a handle on it, it was Bucky. He wasn't going to push him away anymore.

"Good," Bucky said. "Now, how bad did he hit you? Is your nose broken?"

Steve moved his face experimentally. "I don't think so." Bucky nodded, smiling slightly as he looked him up and down. "What?"

"You look terrible," Bucky said, grabbing his shoulders and spinning him so he was facing the mirror.

Steve couldn't help huffing a laugh as he took in his reflection. His eyes were red and puffy, his upper lip was glistening with bloody snot, as was the sleeve he'd kept wiping his nose with. His chin and most of the front of his shirt were covered in blood, and his shirt was torn and dusty from being thrown to the floor earlier. It took him a minute to remember why his knees were bloody—he hadn't fallen on them, but he had hidden his face in them when his nose was still bleeding.

"Let me see if I can clean some of this up," Bucky said, pulling out his wand. "_Tergeo._" The cleaning spell drew away the snot and most of the blood, but some of it had already started to set in and stain. "Wash your face," Bucky said, pointing toward the sink. "We'll go back to the dorm and you can change afterward."

Steve felt better than he would have thought after he cleaned his face. "How much trouble do you think we'll get in for being late?" he wondered. Astronomy had to be halfway over by now.

"At this point, we're probably better off if we just don't show," Bucky said.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. Their absence might be less noticed if they didn't draw attention to it. "Hey," he continued. "How'd you find me so quick?" he asked. He hadn't counted on Bucky doubling back when he should have been on his way to class.

Bucky looked down at him. "I was sick of finding you in pieces after a fight. And seeing as you were doing such a good job of hiding from me…" He smiled. "I sicced the house elves on you."

"You…" Steve took a second to replay that in his head. "You had the house elves follow me?"

Bucky nodded. "They were keeping an eye out. One of 'em came and got me."

Steve wasn't sure what to say to that. He felt the warm, happy thing in his chest expanding. That was…Well, it was a little unorthodox, but it wasn't like he'd given Bucky many options. That he'd go to that length when Steve was being such a jerk…He smiled. "Thanks."

Bucky smiled back.

In the days and weeks that followed, Steve felt like some kind of weight had lifted from his soul. He still got sad, and he still got angry, but it was different now. A cutting remark in the corridors between classes would set his blood boiling, but Bucky's hand on his shoulder would cool it back down again. That listless fog would come rolling into his brain again, but he would fight the urge to wallow in it and look at Bucky instead, who would catch the look and start a conversation or a debate that demanded Steve's attention and pulled his mind back into the moment. Or that sad hole in his chest would come roaring up and all he could see was a chasm of sorrow, and all he could do was whisper, "Bucky, I need help," in a broken little voice, and, even if he woke him up in the middle of the night, Bucky would drop what he was doing and catch him before he fell in. He never told him not to cry, never got impatient with Steve's repetition of worries or fears or things he missed. He'd just let Steve talk, and then, when he was finished, Bucky would talk. He would talk about Steve's ma, about good memories he had of her and funny things she did and nice things she said, and Steve would still feel sad when they were done, but…peaceful.

He wondered why he had ever shut Bucky out in the first place. This was infinitely better than trying to fight his way through the pain. It still hurt, but not as much as when he'd been trying to do it on his own. And it wasn't just Bucky. Peggy and Gabe and Jacques were there too. Jim and Dugan and Monty. Once Steve stopped trying to bite everyone's heads off, he realized he hadn't ever been as alone as he'd thought. His ma had been right. There were people that cared about him.

And that sad, angry hole in his chest, well, it still felt pretty big. But that warm, happy thing that purred had settled down into the middle of it. And, little bit by little bit—with a friendly nudge from Bucky, a smile from Peggy, an off-the-wall comment from Dugan or a silly stunt from Jacques—it was starting to get bigger. And Steve hadn't been able to before, but now he could imagine a day when it would fill the hole all the way up and stitch it back together.

* * *

Things were finally starting to feel like they were returning to normal again. Or, at least, normal was on the horizon. It wasn't perfect, but Steve was on the upswing, and Bucky would take what he could get.

He was still keeping a closer eye on him than he usually did—he was healing but fragile, and he was still working on that urge to punch the pain away (or let someone else do it for him). His fuse was still pretty short, but if Bucky was there, he could talk him back down. Bucky made sure to be there as often as he could. He still worried about him, though, and he couldn't be everywhere, so he hadn't asked the house elves to stop keeping an eye out for Steve. He figured it couldn't hurt.

There had only been three weeks left in the term when they had their confrontation in the bathroom. Since then, he knew Steve had really been trying. And after a week and a half of keeping Steve out of trouble, Bucky had been hopeful that they could hit the end of term without any fights. He'd been wrong on that count, and he was trying not to be _too_ mad at Steve about it. In a messed up way, the fights had been making him feel better, and Bucky had made him quit cold-turkey. A slip-up or two was to be expected. Still, it was hard not to be at least a _little _mad when his jaw was hurting as much as it did.

He'd missed what started it. Some big Gryffindor kid had said something, and he'd seen Steve jumping at him, but he'd been too far away to grab him in time. His opponent didn't seem all that surprised, and they both got in some pretty good punches before they rolled to a stop at the top of the stairs. Bucky had caught up by then, and he grabbed Steve's arm and pulled him out from under the guy, pushing him back down the corridor and getting between them. "Okay, guys," he said, holding up his hands. His gut reaction was to punch people who punched Steve, but he needed to de-escalate this so he could bring Steve back down before this got ugly. Unfortunately, that was as far as he got. Whatever Steve had said while they were rolling away seemed to have _really_ pissed the other guy off, and he didn't seem to care who he hit.

Distracted by the fist to the face and subsequent cracking of bones, Bucky was unaware that he was flying through the air until the stone steps let him know that he had stopped. He hit them with a bone-jarring crash and rolled the last few feet to the bottom of the stairs. He was still trying to figure out which way was up when something hard connected with his stomach and, okay, up was probably the direction that foot was coming from. He grabbed the foot and flung it away, hearing a body tumble to the ground. He pushed himself up, not sure where his wand was or where the guy who was trying to hit him was, but knowing that he'd hit him more if he didn't get up.

Bucky looked up in time to see the big guy lunging at him, and started to roll out of the way as he heard Steve yell. When the guy didn't hit him, he looked up, and wondered for a moment if he'd hit his head—the air in front of him was gold and shimmery, blurring the figure of his attacker who was, oddly, lying several feet away on the floor.

"Don't you touch him!" Steve spat, and Bucky looked up to see Steve, who was not shimmery or blurry (but who _did_ have a bloody nose and an already very pronounced black eye), standing at the foot of the stairs behind him and holding his wand up. Oh, it was a shield spell. He looked back at the mass of shimmering air. A _hell_ of a shield spell. The Gryffindor kid was picking himself up on the other side of it. "Your fight's with me, you come after me, but you keep your hands off him," Steve warned, seething with an anger that was different than the one Bucky had gotten so used to seeing this term.

The Gryffindor kid seemed more than happy to take Steve up on his offer, but Steve was keeping the spell up, glaring daggers at him, and it covered the width of the corridor, leaving him no way to get at him. "Fine," he said at last, evidently giving up on finding a way through. "But you watch your back, Mudblood," he growled before stalking away.

And there was that anger that Bucky had seen way too much of, twisting Steve's face into a snarl. His wand hand shook and the shield spell flickered, but it stayed in place as Steve closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He didn't look quite as murderous when he opened them.

Steve lowered his wand and dropped the spell, looking down at Bucky, and the rest of the anger fell away. "Are you okay?" Steve asked worriedly. Bucky figured he couldn't look any worse than Steve and was about to ask why he looked so freaked out, but stopped with a strangled gasp when he opened his mouth and a blinding pain shot up the left side of his face. Instinctively, he put a hand to his jaw, but pulled it away when he felt something wet—it came away covered in blood and what looked like drool, neither of which he could feel on his face, but found dripping from the side of his mouth when he touched it gingerly again with his fingers. Okay. Broken jaw. Holy crap, that hurt!

Steve had knelt down next to him and looked like he was about to start crying. Holding the uninjured side of Bucky's face in one hand, he shook his sleeve over the other and reached up to carefully wipe away the blood and saliva. "I'm sorry, Bucky, I'm sorry! I didn't know he was gonna…" He pulled his sleeve away, checking to see if he'd gotten it all. "I'm sorry." He dabbed at a spot he'd missed.

Had Bucky been able to open his mouth, he probably would have snapped something along the lines of 'Of course he was gonna come after me, you moron, I was trying to stop him from coming after you!'. So, it was probably just as well that he couldn't say anything.

He let Steve help him to his feet, glad that nothing else seemed to be broken, just bruised and sore. Pulling one of Bucky's arms over his shoulders, Steve was at the perfect height to make a pretty good crutch. They made their way up to the infirmary, Steve apologizing the whole way until Bucky reached a hand over and covered his mouth. Steve shut up then, but kept shooting worried glances up at him. Occasionally, he'd reach over with his sleeve to wipe his mouth again. Begrudgingly, Bucky let him. He still couldn't feel whatever was dripping from his mouth.

It didn't take Nurse Rains long to fix him up, for which Bucky was very thankful, remembering his shattered leg from earlier in the year. This had been a clean break, and a wave of her wand had his jaw and teeth shifting back into place, which felt _very_ strange and made an unsettling crunching noise but didn't hurt. She gave him a potion for all the bruising and left him with a basin of warm water and a cloth to clean his face off.

Steve sat on a stool a few feet away—Bucky could see him in the mirror he was using, looking like he was waiting for judgement. "Would you stop lookin' at me like that?" Bucky sighed.

Steve looked down at the ground. That hadn't been what Bucky meant. He sighed again and put the cloth down and turned to stand in front of Steve. After a minute, Steve looked up. "I'm sorry," Steve said, looking and sounding very small. "I messed up. I…He just made me so mad, and it…" He grimaced. "It _hurt_. And I wanted to, to…" He shook his head. "I've been trying so hard. But I couldn't stop this time." He looked down again. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt."

"I know," Bucky said. It felt nice to be able to talk again. "But I'm okay now. And, hey, you know, maybe…Maybe this is a good reminder for you."

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, looking up at him.

"Next time you wanna jump in swinging, think about what happened this time." Steve's eyes went wide, watering with guilt, and Bucky shook his head. "I'm not…Sorry, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad, I just…" He paused, considering his words. "I'm not mad at you. You're allowed to mess up every now and then. But if you go in, I go in. 'Cause just like you don't like me getting hurt, I hate seeing you hurt too. How you feel right now is how I feel every time you end up in pieces up here. That's why I'm not letting you do it anymore."

Steve stared at him for a long moment. Bucky hoped he'd explained that well. "I'm still sorry," Steve said at last.

"I know," Bucky told him. "And if you need to hear me say it, then I forgive you." Yeah, he wished that Steve had been able to hold it in a little better, but no one was perfect. It was a hard fight he'd been fighting, and he'd been doing pretty good so far. "It's okay if you mess up sometimes," he said again.

Steve looked up at him, a small, grateful smile on his face. "Thanks, Bucky," he said softly. "And I'll keep trying. I promise," he said earnestly.

"I know," Bucky said, looping an arm over his shoulder and pulling him off the stool. "And one of these days, you'll get there." He smiled. "You're gonna be okay, Stevie." There had been a while where he hadn't felt like he could say that, but he could say it now and believe it again.

Steve didn't get into any more fights for the rest of the term, though he came close a couple of times. (Well, to be more accurate, he didn't _start_ any more fights for the rest of the term. He did end up in the infirmary with a broken nose and some sort of scaly rash all over his face after the Gryffindor kid tracked him down. Bucky, Gabe, Jacques and Peggy made sure the Gryffindor kid learned never to do that again.) He was getting a better hold on his anger, and Bucky was starting to recognize the Steve he knew—the Steve he'd been afraid had died with Sarah Rogers.

On the train ride home, they'd all sat on the floor in one of the compartments, playing poker for bottle caps. An argument broke out at one point when Peggy noticed Jim's pile of bottle caps slowly growing, despite the fact that he hadn't won a hand in an hour. He'd been muttering spells at them, slowly increasing his stash, which Dugan thought was a brilliant idea and Monty didn't think counted as cheating per se, while Gabe and Peggy were adamant that it was against the rules. Jacques wasn't getting verbally involved, but Bucky guessed he thought it was cheating too, since he was levitating his little biting licorice pieces and trying to drop them in Jim's hair while he wasn't looking. Some very creative insults were flying back and forth before Jim leapt to his feet, shrieking and twisting and swatting at his back—a number of the Licorice Snaps had fallen from his hair down into his shirt collar. Everyone laughed, and Bucky turned his head in the direction of an unexpected noise. Steve was laughing too. Bucky had seen him smile—thankfully, more and more often lately—but he hadn't laughed since…This was the first time he'd laughed since his ma died. And it was a real laugh. Real mirth, real joy, nothing holding it back. Peggy met his eye and smiled warmly, a smile that had nothing to do with Jim's increasingly frantic dance. She'd caught it too.

Bucky looked back at Steve, who was still laughing, and smiled. Steve really was going to be okay.

* * *

Steve knew Bucky had been worried about him coming back to Brooklyn. To be honest, he had been too, and he was surprised to find that it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Familiar places and faces didn't sting with painful memories anymore, but actually felt kind of comforting—this was a place that had known his ma, and these were people who remembered her. She didn't feel so far away now.

He'd been trying hard to keep a lid on his anger, but it had been tough at school. There had always been people who took issue with his blood status (and he knew he wasn't the only one who dealt with it, either), and even when he was trying to ignore it, the tension of being on the lookout for it all the time was exhausting. But here at home, it wasn't really an issue. Yeah, there were the old neighborhood bullies he had to keep an eye out for, but getting picked on for being little (and therefore an easy target) didn't get his temper up as much. And when he _did_ get angry—he was getting much better at recognizing it before it got too far to shut off—he would go down to the garage and focus on fixing the motorcycle instead. He was kind of surprised that it worked, but it worked really well. And it was probably a healthier coping mechanism than getting punched.

The bike was really coming along. It wasn't going to run any time soon, but it was recognizable as a motorcycle now. He'd cleaned all the rust off, and his scavenging around junk yards and auto shops had earned him some replacements for the pieces too damaged to be cleaned. And he'd found a wheel. Just the one, but it was in pretty good shape.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky said, sticking his head through the door.

The first week or so they'd been back, Bucky had been like Steve's shadow. Steve got it, Bucky was worried, but it was getting really annoying really fast. Steve hadn't wanted it to build up until he exploded at him again, so he'd bitten the bullet and brought it up before it got too out of hand. It had gone pretty well.

"Listen, Buck," he'd said one afternoon. "Can you just…I need some space, alright?" Bucky had looked surprised and a little hurt, and Steve had hurried on to explain. "I get that you're worried about me. But I feel like I'm really close to things being normal again. I _want_ them to be normal again. But you're not acting like it's normal, and…and that's making it hard to _be_ normal."

Bucky hadn't said anything for a long minute, but then he'd nodded. "Okay. Yeah, I…You're right. I'm sorry. It's not like I don't think you can take care of yourself," he'd explained. "I just, well, I wanna make sure you're okay. And I guess I, well, maybe I hover sometimes. A little. But I can back off."

"Thanks," Steve had told him. "But don't…I mean, I don't want you to…Don't back off too far," he'd said with a small smile. Bucky's refusal to back off had saved his life this last term, and he didn't want him to think he didn't appreciate it. And it wasn't like he didn't want him around.

Bucky had grinned, and the twinkle in his eye told Steve he'd gotten it. He'd backed up about five feet and looked up at Steve with a smirk. "What, so, like, here?" he'd asked. Steve had laughed and said that was perfect, and Bucky had laughed too.

"Hey, Buck," Steve replied, looking up from the bike and dashing a hand across his forehead to wipe away the sweat. He felt like he might've just smeared grease across his face, and Bucky's smirk told him he was right. "What's up?"

"Ma sent me down to get you for dinner. She said you'd probably need time to wash up."

"Okay." He gathered up the tools he'd been using and started cleaning them off. Bucky hung them back up, since he could actually reach the hooks without climbing on the table.

"Pop's got tickets for the Dodgers game tomorrow," Bucky said as they headed back out to the street. "You wanna take a day off from the bike?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!" Steve replied. For as long as he could remember, Mr. Barnes had always bought tickets to one game every summer, and Steve had always been invited along. And Quidditch was great and all, but it was just hard to beat a good old baseball game.

The day of the game dawned warm and sunny. Becky was bouncing around the house excitedly, not being a tremendous amount of help to Mrs. Barnes, who was trying to pack a picnic lunch. Steve helped her instead, and they all set off in the car not long after. Steve had forgotten how much he enjoyed baseball—there might be a pick-up game on the grounds occasionally, but the kids at Hogwarts were all about the Quidditch. (Not that Steve had been particularly involved in either of those this last term.) They found their seats, and he scrunched up his nose and allowed Mrs. Barnes to slather his face, neck and arms with sunscreen, even though he was almost fourteen and capable of doing it himself. Bucky did the same, with a longsuffering sigh, and then the two of them helped her apply it to a wriggling Becky who refused to sit still.

The game was fantastic, the air filled with cheers and insults, the smell of peanuts and hotdogs, and the boom of an occasional chant or song. Steve cheered until his throat was raw, leaning out over the railing with Bucky to yell at the umpire—mindful of his language, since Mrs. Barnes and Becky were there. (Mr. Barnes, after a particularly unfair call, was not so careful, which earned him a smack on the shoulder and a scandalized, "George!" from Mrs. Barnes.)

After the game, they made their way out into the parking lot, stopping at the car to unpack their lunch. Mrs. Barnes opened the back door and spread out the contents of the basket. "Hey, guys!" called a familiar voice. Steve turned to see Gabe waving at them.

"Hey!" Steve called. Gabe and his parents, who Steve recognized from the train station but had never spoken to, made their way over.

"Hey, Gabe!" Bucky said. "What're you doing here? I didn't think you believed in sports that aren't Quidditch."

Gabe laughed, as did his father, who had a deep rolling laugh. "Can't forget the old classics, son," he said. He extended a hand. "Ephram Jones. My wife, Abigail." He nodded to Gabe's ma. "I'm guessing you're a friend from Hogwarts?"

"Yes, sir," Bucky said, shaking his hand. "I'm Bucky. This is Steve. We're both in Gabe's year."

"Oh, yes, I've heard about you two," Mr. Jones said with a smile.

"Good things, I hope," Steve said, shaking his hand.

"You wish," Gabe laughed.

Bucky's parents came over, and there was another round of introductions. "We were just about to have lunch," Mrs. Barnes said. "We'd love for you to join us."

Gabe's parents exchanged a look, and Gabe's ma smiled. "If you're sure you don't mind."

"Not at all," Mr. Barnes said.

Her smile widened. "Ephram, why don't you go and get our basket from the car?" Mr. Jones left, returning several minutes later with another picnic basket.

Steve, Bucky and Gabe sat on the hood of the car with their food discussing the game. Becky sat on the roof, hanging on every word. The adults were down at the other end, by the food.

"Now, the Falcons game last week—" Gabe began before getting cut off by Bucky.

"Dude, we just saw the greatest Dodgers game of the year!" Bucky protested. "Let me enjoy the baseball."

Gabe rolled his eyes. "Baseball's all well and good, but you can't tell me it's got anything like Kandinski's Wronski Feint last week."

"A grand slam!" Bucky protested, gesturing back in the direction of the stadium. "How often does that actually happen in a real game?"

Steve chuckled as they continued to argue, sliding down off the hood and making his way to the back of the car to get more lemonade. "Hey, Steve?" Becky asked, leaning over the side of the car as he came back.

"Yeah?"

"Why's that guy keep looking at us like that?" She nodded across the parking lot and Steve followed her gaze. A scowling man was watching them as he waited by his own car. He met Steve's eye and his lip curled up before he looked away.

An angry little knot formed in Steve's stomach. "I think it's because we're eating with the Joneses," he said quietly.

Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion and she looked over at the man, then across the car to Gabe's parents. "Oh," she said, comprehension dawning. She lowered her voice too, even though no one else appeared to be listening. "Because they're black?" Steve nodded and she snorted. "That's dumb."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "People are dumb sometimes."

"Should we say something to him?" she wondered.

Steve shook his head, although he really wanted to pop the guy on the nose. "It'd probably start a fight." An ugly one. And no matter who started it, it would probably end with the Joneses getting arrested. No one else seemed to have noticed him—it was probably better to just keep ignoring him.

Becky nodded, then looked back over at the guy, who was watching them again and glowering. She stuck her tongue out at him, tossed out a hand gesture that she was very lucky her ma didn't see, and turned back to listen to Bucky and Gabe, who were still arguing.

Steve laughed and choked on his lemonade. "Where'd you learn that one?" he asked. He was pretty sure Bucky hadn't taught her that one.

She grinned. "I know stuff," she said with a smirk. Steve chuckled and handed his lemonade up for her to hold while he climbed back up on the car.

* * *

The food for this Fourth of July wasn't quite as spectacular as it used to be—rationing from the war, and whatnot—but it was still pretty good. And it was nice to have something to celebrate. The joy of summer break had been marred by the news of the war—the fighting remained over in Europe, but plenty of Americans were over there. Wizards too, even though this wasn't an official wizard war yet. The news was often bad. Bucky wondered a lot about Jacques and Monty and Peggy. He hoped they were okay.

When the fireworks started, he found Steve up on the roof of their building. He was staring pensively out into the night, red and blue light highlighting the lines of his face. "It looks different from over here," he said softly. Bucky nodded. They'd always watched the fireworks from the roof of Steve's old building before. "You know how, when I was little, I thought they did the fireworks for my birthday?" he asked.

"Yeah."

Steve was quiet for a minute, then smiled. "Ma told me that. When I finally figured out what they were really for, she said it didn't matter. She said I was special enough to get fireworks, so I should still enjoy them." His smile widened. "She always called them my fireworks. Even last year. 'Your fireworks are starting, Steve! Hurry up and get up here!'" His voice wavered a little and Bucky looked up at him, but his eyes were dry. He smiled up at the lights.

Bucky looped an arm over his shoulder. "Happy birthday, Steve," he said softly.

The rest of the break passed relatively uneventfully. Steve spent a lot of time on his motorcycle—Bucky's pop had gotten him some parts from his shop for his birthday, and at the rate he was going, he might have the thing ready to ride by Christmas. That left Bucky with more free time than he'd been expecting, but, seeing as he and Vicki had parted ways before the end of school, it was free time that Daisy Peterson was more than happy to help him fill.

He'd also, at Becky's urging, joined her in a couple of swing dancing competitions. He'd just been trying to be a good big brother at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun. And, as it turned out, they were pretty good. She was only ten, but she was as tall as Steve now, which made her a pretty good height to dance with. She was light too, which meant it was easy to toss her up in the air and twirl her around. They couldn't really practice in the living room anymore, but there were dances down at the church most weekends, and they could try out new moves there. Their ma just about had a heart attack the first time they tried a side flip. (It went off perfectly. He never would have tried it if he'd thought he might hurt her.)

All things considered, it had been a pretty good summer, even if it did end on a low note. Two nights before they went back to school, they'd been sitting around listening to the radio when the broadcaster announced that the fight against Grindelwald had been officially announced as a war. Silence fell over the living room as he listed Grindelwald's recent atrocities, and the steps being taken by the wizarding governments to join together to fight him.

They'd all gone to bed rather soberly, and it wasn't long after that Bucky heard a tentative, "Hey, Buck?" from across the room in the dark.

"Yeah?"

"Do wizard wars work the same as regular wars? Like, do they draft people and stuff?"

"I don't know," Bucky said thoughtfully. It had been such a long time since there had been one. His pop had been young, but old enough to fight back in the Great War—or World War One, as they were starting to call it now—but he'd fought with the American Army, not any coalition of wizards. Most wizards who'd fought then had been the same, as far as he knew. "I know the Aurors are fighting. Maybe it's just them?" He wasn't sure how many Aurors there were in the world.

"Do wizards fight by country?" Steve wondered.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, I know not everybody from Germany is a Nazi, but since they're in charge, England and France and stuff are kind of fighting all of Germany. Do the German wizards fight with Germany, or do they pick sides and fight that way? Like, some of them fight with Grindelwald and Hitler, and some of them fight with the Allies?"

"I think it's the second one," Bucky said, after thinking about it for a minute. "I mean, there's people here in America who think Grindelwald's alright, so they might fight on his side. But there's people like Professor Erskine—he's German, but he's definitely not a Nazi, or a follower of Grindelwald. I think wizards just pick their side based on what they believe in. Since they can travel by magic, where they are probably isn't as important, I don't think."

Steve was quiet for a long minute. "I'll bet that makes it harder," he said at last. "Figuring out who's on what side."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "I wonder if the wizards in Europe and the American volunteers who are already fighting will have to stop and join the wizard war instead?"

He heard Steve sigh. "Everything's so messed up," he said softly.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. There didn't really seem to be anything more to say.

* * *

_So that was all a rollercoaster of emotions, but hopefully we landed in an okay place. Let me know what you guys thought-I'd love to hear from you!_


	14. War Comes to Hogwarts

_Things are starting to pick up on the war front. Let's see how that effects our favorite students.  
_

* * *

Steve had wondered at first if they'd be allowed to go back to school. The fighting was and had been over in Europe for a while now, but Hogwarts had magical defenses against that kind of thing. But now that there was a magical element to the fight as well…He was pretty sure Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had talked it over after the news had broken. There had been smaller outbursts of magical…incidents was probably the best word for them. Not battles or anything, but stuff had been happening Stateside since the declaration of the magical war. It seemed Bucky had been right—wizards weren't confined by geography when they fought. His parents seemed to have decided Hogwarts was just as safe as anywhere else.

Steve was glad, once the train hit Britain, to learn that Peggy and Jacques and Monty were okay. They told them about the air raids that had been happening in England, and though they'd been through several of them, they hadn't gotten hurt.

"The problem is this Grindelwald business," Monty had said. "He's got followers in the U.K, just like everywhere else, only they're a lot quieter about it. These air raids and bombings and things…There's lots of wizards, going around putting up protective charms in their neighborhoods, but then other wizards come around the non-magical homes and take them down again."

"That's awful!" Steve exclaimed.

Monty nodded. "It's the sort of thing that's easy to blame on the war—'oh, the bombs killed them, not me!'—and they can do it without getting their hands dirty."

They didn't talk a lot on the way back to school.

During the announcements after dinner, they were told that Hogsmeade weekends had been cancelled for the foreseeable future—it was an issue of safety, and although there was unhappy murmuring in response to this news, there wasn't any sort of outcry of displeasure. They all got it. As heavily enchanted as Hogwarts was, within school grounds was the safest place around.

Even with the threat of war hanging over them, and the near-daily reminders that came with the morning owls, it was funny how normal things soon felt. School routines continued as usual with classes and sports and homework, and if you tried, you could forget for a while about what was going on outside.

One thing that was different, though, was something in the atmosphere inside the school. It took Steve a while to place it—and once he did, it was still kind of hard to define. There had always been people at Hogwarts to whom blood status was very important. Usually, this limited itself to snide remarks or disdainful glances at people like Steve, Gabe, or Peggy's friend Kelly. (Depending on who was saying what, curses and hexes and punches would be exchanged too.) Steve didn't like it, but was used to it in a way, so he didn't notice at first the way it had changed. It was just…_more_. The looks were a little harder, the words a little sharper. The punches and hexes a little more forceful. And it was all coming from more directions than it used to.

Steve had been trying so hard to let things like that go like he used to. He was getting a lot better at it—although anyone that called him a half-breed or a mutt tended to get hit with a punch or a hex from Bucky if he was around. (Some people might have called that hypocritical, given how hard Bucky had tried to stop him from doing the same thing last year, but Steve didn't think it was. Bucky was sticking up for him, like he always did, and there was a line between defending yourself—or your friend—and reckless anger.) Again, he was kind of used to it, so it wasn't until one day he stayed after the bell in Potions to clean up that something occurred to him.

"Is something on your mind, Steven?" Professor Erskine asked. Bucky had already left, and Steve had stayed behind to pick up the broken set of glass vials that he was mostly sure Ethan had knocked off his desk with his bag on purpose. He looked up at Professor Erskine's voice and realized that he'd been wiping at the same spot on the table for several minutes—the spilled potion long since gone.

Steve sighed. "Maybe," he said. He picked up the last of the glass pieces on the floor and put them in a pile with the others. When he looked up, Erskine was looking at him, waiting for him to continue. Steve sniffed thoughtfully. "It's not really anything," he said. "It's probably stupid."

"I rather doubt that," Erskine said kindly.

Steve sighed, not sure where to begin. He poked half-heartedly at the broken glass with his wand. It would probably break more if he tried to fix it. "Well," he began. "It's just…So, people call me names a lot," he sighed. "Especially with me being half-blood, with my magic and everything." He looked up at Erskine a little nervously as he said that—he knew Erskine knew that, and had, in fact, been very concerned about it last term when Steve had been self-destructing. Steve was still kind of embarrassed about all of that, but Erskine just nodded for him to go on.

"They'll call me half-breed or mongrel or Mudblood, and I know…I know Mudblood's bad, but I know it's different too, with what it means. And I know with what it means that I'm not, well, I'm not actually one, but it never seemed to matter before to people who would say that kind of stuff. But I was noticing that it seems like they're making that distinction now. I don't think anyone's called me a Mudblood all term. Not that I want them to—I'd prefer if they didn't call me anything—but I was just trying to figure out why they stopped."

Erskine crossed his arms and leaned back against his desk with a sigh. "I've noticed the same thing myself," he said with a nod. A small smile crossed his lips when Steve looked up at him curiously. "You're hardly the only student with half-magical heritage in school." He sighed. "And things take on the same sort of sheen in the adult wizarding world, though the insults are usually more subtle." It suddenly occurred to Steve—for the first time—to wonder what Erskine's blood status was. Did he have to deal with this kind of thing too?

Erskine was quiet for a long, thoughtful minute. "I believe the change in terminology, sadly, does not come from any change of heart, but from the change in the political climate."

"What do you mean, Sir?" Steve asked.

"For those concerned with the 'purity' of blood, there has always been a sort of hierarchy. Pure-blooded wizards being, of course, the best, followed by half-bloods, with those with no magical heritage at the bottom," Erskine explained.

"Right," Steve said. He'd known that. "How important to them is that distinction between half-blood and the people with no magical parents?"

"Ah," Erskine replied. "You've hit upon the tricky part there. Because, you see, even people like Gellart Grindelwald, to whom purity of blood is of the utmost importance, have to admit that there simply are not enough pure-blooded families to make these ideas of his a reality. There are not enough people with so-called superior blood to rule over the rest of us, no matter how much he might like that to be true. And now that the war is official, the distinction between some magical heritage and none seems to have become more important."

"So, half-bloods are okay now?" Steve guessed. Erskine nodded and Steve snorted. "That's stupid."

Erskine chuckled. "Well, 'acceptable' might be a better word to use than 'okay', but yes, you're right."

"I sure don't feel more accepted," Steve pointed out.

Erskine's smile faded. "Yes, well, it seems to be manifesting itself not so much as half-bloods being treated better, but as those of non-magical heritage being treated worse."

Steve thought about that. Aside from the change in terminology, it was the same bullies picking on him as it was before, to pretty much the same extent. He knew Gabe had been getting the word 'Mudblood' a lot more, but he hadn't made that connection. "It's not like it changes things, though. Just changing the words you use, but not the way you act."

"No," Erskine agreed.

Steve sighed. "I guess I kinda hoped since there was a war now, maybe we could all be on the same side."

Erskine rested a hand on his shoulder. "Things are rarely so simple as that."

"I know." Steve shook his head. "It's stupid, I know—"

"It isn't stupid," Erskine interrupted. "It's not something stupid to hope for, nor is it something stupid to strive for. It's not an easy road, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't take it."

"There's just…" Steve sighed. "It just seems like so many people. Are there really that many people who think that Grindelwald is right?"

"They are certainly vocal," Erskine agreed. "And there are a good many people who fall somewhere in the middle—who think Grindelwald is taking it too far with the violence and the killing, but who don't find the idea of magical superiority all that distasteful. But I believe that the majority of people believe in the equality of men."

That seemed a little overly optimistic. Steve looked up at him and Erskine smiled. "This war, tragic as it is, proves that. People are willing to fight for what is right. They're willing to make hard choices, to suffer, if need be, for the hope that one day, we _can_ all be considered as one. The voices against us may be loud, and the road may be dark ahead, but none of us walk it alone, Steven."

* * *

Bucky had been outside on the way back from Quidditch practice when the sirens went off. He knew they couldn't be good, but he didn't know what they were for, and was surprised when Jacques grabbed his arm and pulled, shouting, "Allez!"

He ran along with Jacques, joining the crowd of students converging on the castle. Professor Phillips was standing at the doors, ushering them all in and directing them towards the Great Hall. "What's going on?" Bucky asked.

"Air raid," said Monty from behind him.

Oh. Well, no wonder Jacques had known what he should do. But… "An air raid? I didn't think the Germans were bombing this far north."

"Might not be the Nazis," Jim said. "There's nothing out here they want anyway."

Bucky didn't know where exactly they were, but he knew Hogwarts was in Scotland, in a fairly isolated part of the country. There wasn't really anything of strategic value around except for, well, them.

Monty nodded. "I've heard Hydra's been experimenting with blending technology and magic. Could be their planes up there, or Grindelwald's."

A solid, solemn sort of sound echoed through the Great Hall, and Bucky somehow knew it meant Phillips had just magically sealed the front doors. Everyone was inside now. Or they should be, anyway. He stood on his toes to scan the crowd. Where was Steve?

"It is very important, ladies and gentlemen," Phillips began, and the chatter died down at once. "That you remain silent. Yes, this is an air raid. Yes, there are enemy planes above us, and yes, they probably have magic. A great many protective charms cover this school, rendering us invisible to even those who know we are here, but they have spells of their own that are trying to find us. Too much noise, too much motion, and one of them could be triggered. So, please, sit down, stay calm and quiet until I give you the all-clear." He turned to leave the Hall, then turned back to face them. "We are going to be alright," he added.

The tension in the room was so thick you could practically see it shimmering in the air, but everyone obeyed. Bucky dropped carefully to the stone floor, Jim and Monty beside him. Jacques was behind him against the wall. The lights went down around them until they were sitting in near darkness, with only the twilit sky of the enchanted ceiling casting its dim light across the room. People more than a few feet away became dark blurs. He could see the silhouettes of teachers standing in the doorway.

He looked at Monty, who was watching the ceiling. He wondered how many of these Monty had been through, and if he'd thought he would be safe from them here. He looked at Jim, who shrugged, trying not to look nervous. He didn't know what they should be expecting either.

Bucky found himself watching the ceiling along with Monty. He knew the sky reflected the weather outside, but he didn't know if it acted as a window. Would they be able to see the planes flying above them? What did the planes see when they looked down? He thought he remembered hearing that from the outside, to the non-magical eye, Hogwarts just looked like an old ruined castle. And sure, there had to be plenty of those around Scotland, but it's not like they were all in one spot. If the planes could see a ruin, wouldn't they just bomb it anyway? Maybe it looked like something else to magical people? A patch of forest, or a hill?

The longer the silence stretched on, the harder Bucky was finding it to keep quiet. The silence was deafening, oppressive, and left them with nothing to focus on but the whine of circling engines above them. There was the occasional shuddering boom, as of a far-off explosion, and Bucky would wonder what it hit. Were they even dropping bombs? If there were wizards flying those planes, couldn't they be dropping something worse?

An explosion rattled the walls, much nearer than before, and several people let out frightened yelps as the floor beneath them shook. Had the castle been hit? Or something out in the grounds? Bucky's eyes went nervously to the doors, half-expecting something to come through at any moment. A little First-Year a few feet in front of him started crying, and Bucky grabbed the kid and pulled him over, tucking him in against his side. The kid immediately buried his face in Bucky's shoulder, shaking as he continued to cry quietly.

The sky grew black above them, leaving them to sit in darkness. It made the planes seem louder. The kid Bucky was holding would occasionally lift his head, peering out into the darkness. Bucky squeezed his shoulder, hoping the kid didn't hear the pounding of his heart. He was just as scared as the kid probably was, but it made him feel a little braver, somehow, having someone to take care of. The darkness settled in. The air was getting colder. The planes continued to roar threateningly above them.

It seemed like the sharp howl of engines and far-off explosions would never end, and when Phillips finally came back, announced the all-clear and restored the lights, Bucky looked down at his watch and couldn't believe it had only been an hour. He was sure they'd been sitting there all night.

"Back to your dorms, folks," Phillips told them. "It's over. We'll have some food sent to the common rooms for dinner, and then I suggest you all get some sleep."

Bucky stood up. "You okay?" he asked the kid.

"Yeah," he said, wiping his nose. "Thanks," he whispered, then ran off to join the Ravenclaws heading for their tower.

Bucky looked at Jacques. "You've been living through these things all summer?"

Jacques huffed a humorless smile. "Oui."

Bucky shook his head. What a nightmare.

He and Jacques moved with the rest of the Hufflepuffs towards their common room. He didn't find Steve until they were back—he was standing over by the fire watching the door anxiously as people came in. "Bucky!" he exclaimed, looking relieved as he rushed over.

"You okay?" Bucky asked. "I couldn't see you in there."

"I'm alright," Steve said. He looked a little pale, but he was breathing alright, and wasn't showing any signs that his heart had gotten overworked. "What about you?"

"I'm good," Bucky assured him. "I was up in the corner by the front door with Jim and Monty and Jacques."

Steve shook his head. "I can't believe they've been having stuff like this happen all summer. Do you think they hit anything?"

"Kinda sounded like it," Bucky said. "But I didn't see anything on fire or anything out the windows as I was coming back here. Maybe whatever it was exploded against the protective charms and couldn't get through."

They grabbed some food that had appeared on the nearest table, eating thoughtfully. "You think they were trying to scare us?" Steve asked. "Or do you think they really were trying to get us?"

Bucky pondered that. "I don't know." Did people on Grindelwald's side send their kids here? Did Hydra? Did whoever was up in the planes care?

No one was really up to homework tonight, so after they finished eating, they all went to bed. Bucky wondered if anyone went to sleep. He knew he was lying there, staring at the ceiling and listening for more planes. The lack of snoring in the room told him he wasn't the only one.

* * *

People had been a little jumpy around the castle since the air raid. Steve wasn't going to admit it to anyone, but he wasn't exactly keen to go outside these days. He got the feeling other people preferred the safety inside the walls as well.

"Come on, lads," Monty cajoled at breakfast one Saturday. "This might be the last nice weekend of the term. We can't sit inside _all_ the time."

He made a tempting point—it was going to start getting cold and rainy any day now, though the snow was still a way off, and right now it was gorgeous and sunny outside. Not going out and enjoying it would be like letting the other guys win.

They finished their breakfast and trooped outside. A lot of people seemed to have the same idea, and packs of students were spread across the grounds. Their favorite spot under the willow by the lake was occupied by Peggy and Kelly and a couple of their friends, but they happily waved them over. Dugan pulled out a pack of cards—Dugan always seemed to have cards—and they started a game of poker, using a pile of twigs to bet on. Steve grinned as he noticed Peggy keeping a close eye on Jim's pile.

"I don't think he'd try that again," Steve said, referring to the time he'd magically increased his betting stash and gotten Licorice Snaps dumped down the back of his shirt for his trouble.

Peggy chuckled. "He'd better not."

"Hey, what are you glaring at Kelly for?" he asked. He'd noticed her eyeing her friend suspiciously.

"I'm not glaring," Peggy replied. "I'm observing." Steve followed her eyes to where Kelly was frowning over her cards, biting her lip and asking questions of Gabe. Gabe seemed only too happy to help. "She's not _that_ bad at poker," Peggy said significantly. Steve grinned.

The surprise winner of the game turned out to be Bucky's on-again-off-again girlfriend, Vicki Marlowe (they were currently 'on'), and Steve was mostly sure Bucky hadn't let her win. They disappeared not long after that, Bucky shooting Steve a wink before they left. Gabe and Kelly took off too. Steve listened contentedly as Peggy, Dugan and Monty argued about the upcoming Gryffindor-Slytherin game. Jim appeared to have fallen asleep in the sun, and Steve pulled out his sketchbook and started working on a portrait of his sleeping friend.

He didn't notice the argument had died down until Peggy was leaning over his shoulder. "That's quite good," she said.

"Huh?" Steve looked up, startled. "Oh, uh, thanks." He was using the magic pencils Bucky had gotten him for his birthday a few years ago. He drew in the last line, and the little image of Jim shifted on the page, snoring soundlessly. Peggy smiled.

"Can I see what else you've got in there?" she asked.

"Um, yeah, I guess so," Steve said, handing her the book. She took it and started flipping the pages carefully. Steve brushed his hands off. "Where'd Dugan and Monty go?"

"Down to the lake to see if they can get the squid to come up," Peggy replied. "Do you have a house elf at home?" she asked curiously.

Steve leaned over to see what she was looking at. "Oh, no, that's Winston. He's the elf that usually cleans the Hufflepuff common room. I see him in there late at night sometimes."

Peggy nodded, slowing her perusal of the pages as she landed on a page with several small sketches of a woman's face, all from different angles. The next few pages showed her face again, larger, smaller, one in color… "Is this your mum?" she asked carefully.

Steve nodded. He'd drawn his ma before, but these had all been done after she died. He'd woken up in the middle of the night once, after a dream where he couldn't see her face. He'd wanted to get it down, from as many angles as he could, afraid he might forget.

"She's lovely," Peggy said softly. She looked at one of the larger portraits, looked up at Steve and smiled. "You've got her eyes, you know." She held the sketchbook up next to Steve's face, comparing. "And she's got the same sort of lines around her mouth when she smiles as you do."

Steve couldn't help smiling at that. Peggy handed him the book back. He looked down at the sketch and smiled, running a finger along the edge of the page before closing the book. "Is it alright?" Peggy asked. "I mean, that I…" She gestured at the book.

Steve nodded. "Yeah." He smiled at her to let her know he meant it. "I don't mind talking about her anymore." It had hurt at first, reminding him that she wasn't there anymore. But now it was more like being reminded of her. It was nice. "It's okay." He smiled. "I forget sometimes that you didn't know her. She liked to hear so much about my friends here, she would talk about you all like she knew you."

Peggy smiled. "Well, I'd be happy to hear about her, if you ever want to talk about her."

Steve felt that little warm, happy thing purr contentedly in his chest. "Thanks," he said softly.

A buzzing beetle landed on Jim's face then and woke him up abruptly. They laughed as Jim swatted at his face, then decided to go down to the lake to check on Monty and Dugan's progress with the squid. A timely decision, as it turned out—not only had they gotten the squid's attention, but they had managed to irritate it somehow, and Dugan was in need of the assistance of more than just Monty.

* * *

_Hope you guys are still enjoying the story! I'd love to hear from you and find out what you're thinking._


	15. Of Kittens, Dementors and Hobbits

_So, the war is picking up speed, and we're fast approaching lining back up with the movie and the boys getting involved more directly in the fight. But one more shot of fluff first-because the word 'kitten' is in the title, and you can't use that word and not have fluff._

* * *

Bucky woke up with the sudden feeling that someone was looking at him. His eyes snapped open, and he stared in surprise, blinking several times to make sure he saw what it looked like he saw. Sitting on the mattress about six inches from his face was a very small fluffy yellow kitten, staring at him with sad blue eyes.

Bucky sat up. He looked down at the cat, then looked around the room. Everyone else seemed to have gotten up already. He knew Steve tended to be an early riser on Saturdays. He wasn't sure where the rest of the guys were. The cat continued to stare at him. "Hi," he said awkwardly. It responded with a mew.

The kitten wasn't wearing a collar. Not many people in Hufflepuff had cats—they were mostly a toad and owl dorm—and Bucky recognized the few there were. This one was new. "You know you're not supposed to be in here," he informed the kitten. Aside from the fact that there was some kind of magic in the dorms that kept pets out of rooms their owners didn't live in… "My friend Steve's allergic to cats, and you're already getting hair in here."

The cat responded by making an abrupt, sort of choked-sounding little hissing noise, surprising both Bucky and, apparently, itself. It shook its little head and blinked back up at Bucky with a pitiful meow.

"You are cute," Bucky allowed. "But you can't be in here." He picked it up and leaned over, setting it down on the floor. "Besides, someone's probably looking for you. You should go home." He felt a little ridiculous talking to a cat.

The cat looked affronted when he set it down. It blinked disapprovingly at him, then crossed the floor to Steve's bed, catching the blanket with its little claws and climbing up.

"Hey, no!" Bucky said, getting out of bed. "I told you, Steve's allergic to cats, get off of there." He reached for the kitten and it darted away toward the head of the bed. It stopped and made that weird little noise again and Bucky grabbed it. "Come on," he said, heading toward the hall. He set the kitten on the floor. "Go home," he told it, shutting the door. It meowed pitifully from the other side, and he ignored the odd way that it hurt.

Since he was awake now, he decided he'd go ahead and get dressed and go to breakfast. He was just pulling his shoes on when the door swung open. He looked over and saw the little kitten hanging from the door handle by its paws. It looked like it had jumped up and caught the handle, using its weight to pull it down and open. That was…Oddly intelligent for a cat. Oddly determined, too.

The cat dropped from the handle and came back into the room, eyeing him reproachfully. It sat at his feet and meowed at Bucky in a way that could only be described as insistent. "What do you want?" Bucky asked. The cat made the weird noise again, sniffed, then bounded over to Steve's side of the room. It climbed into one of Steve's slippers and sat there. "What's with the fascination with Steve's stuff?" Bucky asked, picking the kitten up out of the shoe. It squirmed out of his hands and ran over to Steve's school bag, climbing in. It meowed at him and started pushing things out of the bag. "Hey, come on!" Bucky said. What was the deal with this cat?

He bent down to pick it up again and it shoved Steve's Transfiguration textbook out onto the floor. It jumped out after the book and mewed adamantly at Bucky, tapping the book with its paw. That was weird. "Are you trying to tell me something?" Bucky asked. He'd hadn't actually been expecting the cat to respond—it was a _cat_, after all—so he was incredibly surprised when the cat nodded.

"Okay, that's weird." He sat down on the floor in front of the little kitten. "Alright. What?" The cat tapped the book again. "Textbook? Homework? School? Class?" He felt like he was playing charades. The cat huffed and laid a little paw on the cover of the book above the title. "Transfiguration?" The cat nodded. Bucky's eyes narrowed. "Did someone transfigure you? Are you not supposed to be a cat?" The cat made that strange noise again, then nodded. "Okay, so…Oh, crap, you're not Steve, are you?" Because that was just the sort of thing that would happen to Steve. And of course the kitten nodded, mewing dolefully.

"No," Bucky said, shaking his head and pointing an accusing finger at the kitten. "No, no, this…" He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Okay, just to make sure you're actually Steve, and not some weirdly responsive cat…" He looked around. What was something a cat couldn't do? "Okay, show me where Steve keeps the medicine for his heart."

The cat looked at him, then hopped off the book and climbed up Steve's bed. It jumped from the bed to the nightstand, turned around and crouched, and used its back leg to push the partially open drawer further open. It slid down into the drawer, and, as Bucky had known it would, came up with a small plastic bottle in its mouth, which it deposited into Bucky's lap after jumping to the ground.

"Crap," Bucky muttered. The kitten meowed in agreement. Bucky picked him up, looking into his eyes, and he should have seen it before. "You're really Steve, aren't you?" The kitten nodded, and Bucky sighed. "What the hell, man?" he asked. "How did you…Why are you a cat?"

Steve meowed pathetically in response and Bucky nodded. "Right. Right. It's not like you could tell me." He looked the kitten over. "Are you okay?" The cat blinked and gave him a _look_, and if he'd had any doubts that this was Steve, that took care of it. Bucky rolled his eyes. "I mean aside from being a cat. Are you hurt or anything?"

Steve shook his head. "Well, that's something," Bucky allowed. Steve made that weird noise again, shaking his tiny little body as he did so. "Why do you keep making that sound?" Bucky asked. Steve sniffed and looked up at him. "Is that…Is that a cat sneeze?" Bucky wondered. Something occurred to him, and he tried not to smile because it was ridiculous, but very Steve at the same time. "You're allergic to yourself now, aren't you?"

Steve glared at him with eyes that were starting to look a little runny, and Bucky tried not to laugh, he really did. "Oh, come on," Bucky said. "It's a _little_ bit funny."

Steve hissed at him and looked away. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Bucky said. "Look, we'll go fix it, alright? We'll go find Professor Marsh, and you'll be you again and we'll go have breakfast."

The Transfiguration teacher, as it turned out, was not in her office. Nor was Professor Phillips in his. (Bucky had thought, seeing as Phillips tended to be the one who un-transfigured Jacques when Steve's spells took an unexpected turn, that he'd be a good second choice.) Erskine wasn't in his office either. "Where is everybody?" Bucky wondered. Steve just meowed.

"Okay, maybe they're all at breakfast." He made his way back down to the Great Hall, but, of course, there was no one at the teacher table. "Hey, Helen," he called, grabbing the attention of a girl in their house who was leaving. "Do you know where all the teachers are?"

"Oh, yeah, they're down in Hogsmeade at some kind of meeting. Donovan said he saw the Minister for Magic come up this morning, and they all went down together. It's probably some more security stuff. Cute cat, by the way." She left.

Steve looked up at Bucky and meowed pitifully. "No," Bucky said. "No, it's okay, we'll just…We'll just wait until they come back. Unless you want me to find a Seventh-Year and get one of them to undo it?" A Seventh-Year might have the skill to undo this. Bucky knew he sure didn't. Steve shook his head. "Yeah, that's probably smarter. So, we'll just wait. They'll get back and we'll un-cat you later." Steve sighed, as did Bucky. "You want breakfast?"

He slipped Steve into the chest pocket of his robe—he didn't think they were supposed to have animals in the Great Hall. He sat down and Steve crawled out into his lap, out of sight of the other people at the table. Bucky piled eggs, bacon and toast onto his plate, sliding the occasional piece of bacon or morsel of toast down for Steve. Steve did that weird little cat sneeze a few more times—the girl across the table kept looking up whenever he did, and Bucky would just smile.

"Alright," he said, slipping Steve back into his pocket as he stood. "What do you want to do?" He wasn't usually awake at this point on Saturdays. Steve stuck his head up out of his pocket and meowed. Bucky decided to head back to the common room. There was less chance of getting into trouble there, and there was a fire going. It was cold today.

Back in the common room, Bucky dropped into an armchair by the fire. He pulled Steve out of his pocket and set him on the arm of the chair. "So," Bucky started. "You're a cat." Steve blinked at him. "Somebody hexed you, didn't they?" He thought it was unlikely that Steve had accidentally done this to himself somehow. Steve nodded. "Older kid?" Bucky guessed. Human transfiguration—well, _intentional_ human transfiguration—was pretty advanced stuff. Steve nodded again. "What'd you do?" Bucky wondered. Steve widened his sad blue eyes innocently, and Bucky laughed. "Uh huh. I'll buy that." Steve sneezed again.

The door slammed and Steve jumped. "Hey, it's alright," Bucky said, picking him up and setting him down in his lap. It had just been a loud group of Second-Years heading outside. All things considered, though, Steve was entitled to be a little jumpy. "We'll fix you up, Steve. It'll be okay." Without really thinking about it, he started stroking the soft fur behind his ear. Steve rolled his head a little, offering a better angle, and purred. Bucky chuckled. "Although, you do make a pretty cute cat." Steve glared at him, but allowed him to keep petting his head.

Bucky didn't realize he had drifted off to sleep until he was blinking awake again. It was warm and pleasantly drowsy in front of the fire, and he appeared to have shifted slowly down in the chair until he was almost lying flat, long legs extended out in front of him closer to the flames. Steve was curled up in a tiny ball on his chest, sleeping and making that rumbling motor kind of noise that cats did. Bucky smiled and petted the little kitten's back and the contented purring got louder. He wondered idly how much of a cat Steve actually was right now. He wasn't worried—Steve had obviously retained all of his human faculties—but he wondered how much something like the purring was something Steve could control.

They sat that way for a little while longer until Steve sneezed himself awake, scrabbling clumsily on Bucky's chest as he startled himself. Bucky laughed and Steve glared at him, digging his little claws through the fabric of Bucky's shirt when he didn't stop laughing.

"Ow! Ow! Hey, come on, man," Bucky protested, picking Steve up and sitting up straighter, still chuckling. "You've got to admit, that was pretty adorable." Steve continued to glare, and Bucky smiled apologetically and patted him on the head.

"Hey, Bucky," greeted a voice from the door. Bucky turned to see Dave coming in.

"Hey, Dave."

"I didn't know you had a cat," Dave said, looking Steve over as he approached.

"Oh! Yeah, I, uh, it's not mine. Just watching him for a friend."

Dave nodded. "Oh, alright. Didn't think you could get away with having one in our room." They all knew Steve was allergic to cats. "Listen, have you done that Astronomy essay? All the books on solstices are checked out of the library…"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I'm done. The library book should be in my backpack in our room if you want to get it."

"Thanks!" Dave said with a smile. "Have fun with the cat."

Bucky turned back to look at Steve, who had started clawing at a loose thread on the knee of Bucky's pants while they'd been talking. "Hey, stop that!" He swatted at Steve's little paw and Steve sat up quickly, and Bucky didn't know if cats could blush, but Steve sure looked like he wanted to. Bucky bit his lip to keep from smiling. Okay, so, there were some cat instincts in there. He was tempted to pull a string out of the blanket on the back of the chair and see if Steve would chase it, but that might just get him clawed in the face, and he'd probably deserve it.

"Tell you what," Bucky said, scratching Steve behind the ear. "It's almost lunch time. Let's see if the teachers are back yet, huh? We'll get you some opposable thumbs to eat your lunch with."

That seemed to cheer Steve up, and Bucky stood, making sure Steve was tucked securely into the crook of his arm. He felt Steve shiver as they moved out into the hall and away from the fire, and he transferred him to his pocket again instead. He patted the pocket gently. "There you go," he said.

Professor Phillips' office was closer than Professor Marsh's, so they headed there first. He heard voices through the door that stopped abruptly when Bucky knocked. "You need something, Barnes?" Phillips asked, holding the door open. Behind him was an official-looking guy in pinstriped robes—probably one of the Ministry people Helen had mentioned.

"Yes, Sir," Bucky replied. "I needed some help with, um, a problem that…" He didn't want to go into too much detail with the other guy there.

"Life or death?" Phillips asked.

"No, Sir."

Phillips nodded. "Wait here a minute." He indicated one of the benches by the door, then shut the door again.

Bucky sat down. He could feel Steve squirming nervously in his pocket. "Hey, it's alright," he said, patting the fluffy little head. "He'll fix you up in just a minute." Steve sneezed again.

The door opened and the Ministry guy left, nodding at Bucky as he went. Bucky stood, unsure if he should wait to be invited in when Phillips barked, "You coming?" Bucky hurried inside, closing the door behind him. "Whatcha got?" Phillips asked.

"Well, Sir, I was hoping you could help me fix this," he said, pulling Steve out of his pocket and setting him on the desk in front of Phillips.

Phillips arched an eyebrow. "If your cat's sick, you should take it to Professor Ellerton. He does all the animal stuff around here."

"No, I know, Sir, it's just this…This isn't a cat," Bucky explained. He pointed down at the little kitten that was blinking entreatingly up at Phillips. "This is Steve."

Phillips looked at Bucky then down at Steve. "That's Rogers?" he asked. If he was surprised, he didn't let on.

"Yes, Sir."

Phillips frowned. "Why is he a cat?"

"I'm not sure, Sir. I think someone hexed him."

Phillips looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. "Of course, they did. Alright, put him over there," he said, gesturing to a spot on the floor. Phillips stood and Bucky picked up Steve, setting him down where Phillips had indicated. Phillips studied the tiny kitten for a moment, calculating, then waved his wand. There was a puff of air and a silent explosion of cat fur, and a sheepish-looking Steve was standing where the kitten had been. "You good?" Phillips asked.

The cloud of fur was drifting to the floor, settling on Steve's hair and shoulders, and Steve opened his mouth to reply and sneezed. "Yes, Sir," he replied, sniffing and wiping his nose with his sleeve. "Thank you."

Phillips nodded. "Who was it?"

"Um, Avery and Daniel, Sir. I—"

"Alright," Phillips said, cutting him off. He made a note on a piece of parchment on his desk. He looked back up. "You can go."

Steve nodded and wiped his nose again. "Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

"Thank you, Professor," Bucky echoed.

Phillips nodded. "Try to stay out of trouble, will you?" He waved them toward the door and returned to whatever he was writing.

"You okay?" Bucky asked when they were back in the hall.

"Yeah," Steve replied. He sneezed again and wiped at his nose. His eyes were still red and watery.

"Let's go back to the dorm and get your allergy medicine before we go to lunch," Bucky suggested. Fortunately, his cat allergy was mild, but he was absolutely covered in hair.

Steve nodded. "Probably a good idea," he agreed, wiping his nose again. He looked up at Bucky and smiled. "Thanks."

Bucky smiled back. "You're welcome. So, what happened? How'd you piss someone off enough to get turned into a cat?"

Steve scowled. "They were picking on this little Second-Year and wouldn't listen when I told them to stop. It got kinda messy."

"Yeah, looks like it," Bucky agreed. "Kid alright?" He really wished Steve would pick his battles more carefully, or at least get backup, but he couldn't really fault him for sticking up for someone else. At least he hadn't gotten hurt this time.

"Yeah," Steve said. "It was in this corridor over here," he added, pointing to the left. "I hope my wand's still there." That hadn't occurred to Bucky, but, yeah, of course he would've dropped his wand when he turned into a cat. Thankfully, the wand was still there.

Back in the dorm, Bucky got Steve a glass of water while he dug his allergy pills out of the nightstand. Steve pulled the fur-covered robe over his head and shook his hair out, sending little pieces of cat hair floating down to the floor. Bucky vanished the pile of hair on the floor, and Steve looked at his bed and the little yellow strands of fur all over the blanket with a frown.

"That was all you, man," Bucky said. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I told you to get off your bed."

Steve rolled his eyes and rolled the blanket up, dropping it in the corner of the closet with his dirty laundry. "Well, I was trying to get you to figure out it was me. I can't believe you shut me out in the hallway."

"Yeah, well, I can't believe you opened the door again. You were the tiniest cat ever, how did you even jump that high?"

Steve blushed a little. "It took me four tries," he admitted.

Bucky laughed and looped an arm over his shoulder. "Welcome back, Stevie."

* * *

Christmas vacation started with Pearl Harbor and America officially joining the war in Europe, and things only seemed to get gloomier after that. This Christmas holiday had been cold and rainy like the last one. It was a different sort of cold though—it didn't just hang heavy in the air, but settled into your bones and your soul. At first, Steve had thought it was just him—he figured Christmas without his ma was going to be tough—but Bucky had been acting pretty morose lately, and even Becky had been subdued.

"Dementors," Mr. Barnes said the third night they were home. "O'Malley down at the shop said the government confirmed it this morning."

"Dementors?" asked Mrs. Barnes, putting a hand to her chest. She sounded nervous. "Here?"

Mr. Barnes nodded. "It's not as though we didn't suspect it, Winnifred."

"I know, but…" She shook her head.

"How'd they get here?" Bucky asked.

Steve wondered that too. They'd heard about Dementors at school, even practiced spells for warding them off (not that his were any good), but the only ones he knew of lived in Britain, guarding the wizard prison.

Mr. Barnes shrugged. "Who knows? Grindelwald's supporters, no doubt. Just like there are resistance fighters in countries he's occupied fighting him, he's got resistance people of his own over here, fighting us."

"And the Dementors cause the weather?" Steve asked, unsure of how that worked.

Mr. Barnes nodded. "There haven't been reports of anyone being attacked yet—not that we know of—but they're breeding right now. That's what makes the weather so miserable."

"What happens when they do start attacking people?" Bucky asked quietly.

"Nothing good. But hopefully it won't come to that," Mr. Barnes said. "Aurors are already working on it. With any luck, they'll be contained before they can cause any harm."

"Still, it's best to be careful," Mrs. Barnes said. "Rebecca, I don't want you going outside while it's like this. And boys, I know you've been studying some protective spells at school, but I would feel better if you stayed in too."

"But, Ma—" Bucky started.

"Can you make a Patronus?" his father asked. Bucky nodded. "A corporeal Patronus?" he specified.

"No." Bucky had been able to consistently produce a Patronus, but it had yet to take shape beyond a glowing cloud of mist (which was all anyone expected of Fourth-Year magic anyway). Steve was lucky to get his wand to glow.

"Then your mother's right. You boys should stay indoors unless an adult wizard is with you."

"Yes, sir."

Steve nodded his agreement. He had no desire to have his soul sucked out.

Oddly, after the Dementor conversation, things got cheerier around the house. It no doubt had to do with the Patronus conjured by Bucky's ma—a plump silver cat—that prowled around the house night and day. It was joined by a large, translucent owl in the evenings when Mr. Barnes came home. Steve found the creatures fascinating at first, but soon became used to their presence.

Although Steve knew Bucky was very good at sneaking around, he'd displayed no interest in sneaking out of the house. Despite his displeasure at being made to stay indoors, he knew it was with good reason. "I know I wouldn't be any good if I ran into one," he said. A silvery mist trickled out of his wand, refusing to take shape. "I'm just so _bored_," he complained, slumping back onto his bed.

Steve smiled. He got it, but he was much better at being cooped up inside than Bucky was. Upside to being a sickly child, he guessed. "You wanna play a game?"

Bucky looked up at him suspiciously. "I'm not playing Monopoly with you again." Steve was inclined to agree with him. That had been a bad idea for all concerned.

"We could play Sorry," Steve suggested. He knew that battered game box was somewhere in the closet in the hall. There were always cards, too, but Steve had had enough Poker for a while.

Bucky considered, then nodded. "Alright. I'll go get Becky, she's probably bored too."

They set up the board game on the kitchen table. Steve wondered how much like a real cat the Patronus cat was—it leapt up on the table and kept pawing at the pieces, though it wasn't solid enough to knock any over.

Becky won, but just barely. Bucky was more than happy to let girls win when he was trying to be charming, but that did not apply to his sister. (Neither did it apply to Peggy, but that was because she would have punched him for it.) Once the game was over, it was time to help Mrs. Barnes get things ready for dinner, a task all of them were more eager for than they usually were. There really wasn't much to do.

Steve didn't really remember at what point they'd hit upon this particular activity—it was probably something they came up with when it was Becky's turn to pick, but it ended up sticking. They would pick a book and take turns reading it aloud, eventually getting more dramatic as they went along, acting out scenes and sometimes using costumes and props. They were currently working on The Hobbit. Between the three of them, they managed a good variety of voices for the thirteen dwarves. Becky had assigned Bucky the role of Bilbo, so Steve was alternatively Gandalf and Gollum. Becky wanted to be Thorin.

It took Steve a few tries to get Gollum's voice right before Becky or Bucky were pleased with it. Once he did, he crawled along the floor, sneaking out from behind the couch to where Bucky was sitting with his lit wand standing in for the sword. Becky read the narration, leaving the book on the floor so they could see their lines.

"Does it guess easy?" Steve hissed. "It must have a competition with us, my precious," he continued, drawing out the 's' and making Becky giggle. He paused and leaned over the book to check his next lines. "If precious asks and it doesn't answer, we eats it!"

"Thirty white horses on a red hill. First, they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still," Bucky said in a deep voice when it was his turn.

"No, Jay, that's your Balin voice," Becky whispered.

"Oh, whoops." He repeated the riddle in his Bilbo voice.

"Teeth! Teeth, my precious!" Steve cackled. "But we only has six," he added, baring his teeth in a grin and snapping them together twice. Becky snorted with laughter, and Bucky bit his lip to try to keep from laughing and breaking character.

The riddle about darkness ending life and killing laughter reminded them uncomfortably of the Dementors and the gloom outside, but they pushed through and were soon laughing again as Steve wondered, "Is it juicy? Is it scrumptiously crunchable?" smacking his lips like he wanted to take a bite out of Bucky.

Steve felt a little silly, skulking around the living room and talking in that strange voice, but he was having fun at the same time, and Becky and Bucky were laughing. Just as he was starting to wonder if his voice could take any more or if he was going to have to stop and get some water, Gollum's part was over. Becky handed the book to Steve to continue the narration and leapt to her feet, attempting to play as many of the goblins at once as she could and chasing Bucky around the living room. His eye caught the Patronus cat sitting in the doorway, glowing a little brighter than usual, and Mrs. Barnes standing behind it, smiling as she watched them.

* * *

_The next chapter is a little one, so I'm adding it on for the weekend._


	16. The Norseman's Cube

_.  
_

* * *

It was funny, the things you got used to. Outside the walls of Hogwarts, the war raged on. And inside, well, they were hardly unaffected—the air raids continued, still frightening, but not as terrifying as they once were; an anxious tension swooped into the Great Hall each morning on a rush of feathers, each student hoping their owl wouldn't be the one bearing bad news; some students had left, either not returning from Break or leaving when the owls brought the worst news—whether the deaths came from Nazi bombs or Grindelwald's soldiers, it hardly mattered.

And yet, there was comfort in the routine of daily life. Classes and homework, sports and games, curfews, study halls, and, yes, even Steve getting the snot kicked out of him in the courtyard—these all had the ring of normality to them. Bad things were happening, but life was going on, and it was possible to feel safe and settled for a while, until the next bad thing.

Currently, Bucky was feeling very settled, almost too much so as he fought to stay awake, his arms folded on the table and his head propped on top of them, staring into a crystal ball. Divination was…well, it was sort of interesting, he supposed, he just wasn't any good at it. He had yet to See anything. Monty seemed to have a knack for it, and he knew Peggy had Seen once or twice, but on the whole, his friend group seemed generally ungifted as far as telling the future went.

"It looks like it's on fire," he said at last. Red and orange were flickering inside the orb.

Steve flipped the pages of his textbook. "Fire usually indicates destruction," he said, reading from the chart.

Gabe snorted. "Well, that's specific. It's not like there's a lot of that going on right now or anything."

Steve shook his head and smiled, scanning the book for more information. Bucky smirked. "It could also indicate that there's a reflection of the fire in the corner."

Steve and Gabe turned to look behind them, where Professor Caan's fire was burning merrily. "Yeah, it could be that," Steve agreed.

"I think it's that," Bucky said, moving his head to change the angle and watching how the colors moved.

Gabe shook his head. "I don't understand why he's gotta light that thing every day. It's roasting in here."

"The incense is supposed to help us get into the right frame of mind," Steve said.

"Yeah, well, the only frame of mind I'm getting into is a sleepy one," Gabe countered.

Bucky grinned. "Yeah, it's not a good idea to have this class after lunch. Alright, Steve, your turn. What do you see?"

Steve squinted into the ball, then shifted in his seat. "All I've got is the reflection of the fire. And now that I'm blocking it, it's…blue?"

"That's very specific, Steve," Bucky smirked.

"Shut up. Let's see…uh…" He stared into the ball for a while. "It's still blue."

"You know the ball's blue, right?" Gabe pointed out.

"No, it's like, a different blue now. Like it's glowing. And maybe a…a box. Yeah. There's a glowing blue box."

Bucky flipped through the pages of the book.

"And a snake," Steve added.

"There's a snake in the box?" Gabe asked.

"No, it's…in front of the box. Like it's guarding it, maybe."

"Well," Bucky started. "A snake can mean deception. I can't find anything about a glowing box, but there is something about a block here, which stands for building things. So, somebody's gonna build something and lie about it?"

Gabe chuckled and Steve shook his head. "It's not a block, it's a box. Like a cube. Maybe glass? And I don't think it's a real snake. It's like…wood or something."

Gabe leaned in, as if he could see what Steve was Seeing. "I got nothing," Bucky said. Nothing in the book about glass boxes or wooden snakes.

Steve sat up and shrugged. "Doesn't matter. It's gone anyway."

"That's still kinda cool, though," Gabe said. "You actually Saw something."

"I don't know," Steve protested. "Maybe it was just…" He waved his hand at the crystal ball. "There's all kinds of crap in there."

He had a point—even when they weren't in use, mist and colors would swirl inside the balls. Professor Caan had warned them that the Ungifted could mistake the movement of the mist for Visions. Still… "Yeah, maybe," Bucky said. "But that sounded more specific than just moving smoke. I think you might've really Seen something."

"You think?" Steve asked hopefully. He never had before.

"Yeah, I think so," Bucky said. Gabe nodded. "I mean, who knows what the hell it means, but…"

Steve nodded. Professor Caan had also warned them that Visions could just as easily be about unimportant matters as they could earth-shattering prophecies. The Inner Eye Saw what it would, and if what it wanted to See was what was for lunch tomorrow, then that was what you Saw. He'd proceeded to wax eloquent for a while after that about the nature of mundanity and various forms of significance, and had only stopped when Steve had fallen asleep and fallen backwards off his chair.

Gabe took his turn next, and thought he might see a broom, or maybe it was a cow, and Steve and Bucky gave him grief about that until the bell rang.

* * *

_Meanwhile, in Germany…_

Johann Schmidt had not slept for several days. He was close—so close! He could feel it. The Tesseract was within his grasp. Books and papers littered the desk before him. Silvery vials lined the edge of a Pensieve where cloudy memories swirled. It was real. That much, he had proven. It had come to Earth. That much he had proven as well. But where was it now? Where?

A predatory smile parted his lips, baring his teeth and stretching farther up his face than one felt that it should. It frightened Zola when he smiled like that. He rather enjoyed it. But now, now he smiled alone, for he had succeeded, and his moment of triumph would not be shared. He had it!

It all added up. The etching was the last piece of the puzzle. It matched the grainy photograph, taken in Tønsberg. The details of the relief sculpture were difficult to make out in the photograph, but clear enough to match them to the much better defined etching—Yggdrasil, Tree of the World, surrounded by curving vines and snakes, protecting the stone that had many names. The stone that would soon be his. Let Grindelwald enjoy his reign of terror with his Elder Wand. It would be brief. Because Johann Schmidt was going to Norway.

And he was coming home with the Tesseract.

* * *

_Schmidt is going after the Tesseract now-and the combination of magic and an Infinity Stone probably isn't very good news for the war. _

_I'd love to hear what you guys are thinking! See you on Monday with a new chapter!_


	17. It's Not Just In The Papers Now

_A/N: A little bit of fluff here still, but the war is starting to pack some punches. Won't be long now until our boys are right in the middle of it.  
_

* * *

It had been an unseasonably rainy spring. The Dementors had something to do with it, no doubt. Bucky wondered if Hogwarts' protective charms acted as a Patronus as well as keeping them out—their shadow had lifted from New York when he'd been home for Easter, but he remembered only too well that dreadful cold from before Christmas, that feeling of wondering if he would ever be happy again. His parents' Patronuses had kept him and Becky and Steve safe and happy, and he didn't feel that same heavy gloom from before when he was here. He wondered what the castle's Patronus might look like.

Steve was up in the infirmary again. The extended cold weather had been aggravating his asthma, but what had landed him a weekend pass to the medical wing was a very violent and unexpected Potions explosion. It hadn't been of his own making—he was actually pretty good at Potions—but something had gone very wrong two tables over, and it had had quite a splash radius. Steve wasn't the only one in the infirmary because of it, and the three kids who had been at the table with the explosion had been sent in to St. Mungo's for more extensive treatment. Whatever they had done, the Basilisk venom hadn't diluted the way that it should have, and it packed a hell of a wallop. Steve's left leg, a patch on his stomach, and his left forearm (which had, thankfully, been shielding his face) were currently made of stone. Jim thought it was granite. Bucky could not have cared less what kind of stone it was.

Thankfully, it had been diluted enough, and Professor Erskine had reacted quickly enough, that the effect was much less damaging than pure venom would have been. Everyone was expected to make a full recovery.

Nurse Rains had, once again, lifted the visitor restrictions in the medical wing. She seemed to have a knack for knowing when to bend the rules. The really creepy illnesses and injuries seemed to qualify—the ones where distraction was preferable to quiet.

Bucky was coming up the stairs in a bit of a huff. Steve—although he and the others had been given extensions—wanted to get a start on his homework, so Bucky had gone down to get it for him. He'd run into Vicki on the way back up. The guys teased him sometimes about his on-again-off-again relationship with her, and as of ten minutes ago, they were off again. Vicki had complained that he hadn't been spending enough time with her lately, and that may or may not have been true—he wasn't in the mood to think back over the term right now—but she had taken issue with the fact that he was going to continue to not spend time with her this weekend and be up in the infirmary with Steve, which had made it an easy argument for Bucky to finish.

He swung the infirmary door open harder than necessary, earning him a reprimand from Nurse Rains before he continued on to Steve's bed. A party appeared to have sprung up in his absence. "Hey, guys." Jim, Jacques, Gabe, Kelly, Peggy, Dugan and Monty had pulled chairs up around Steve's bed.

"Hey!" Dugan greeted with a wave. "C'mon, you're just in time!"

"In time for what?" Bucky wondered, taking the chair near the head of the bed the others had left vacant for him.

"They're not going to let me do my homework," Steve said, smiling despite the token complaint.

"You've got to make the most of your free time," Monty insisted. "Look, my mum sent these in the Post this morning, and I thought it would be awfully selfish of me to eat them all." He pointed to a colored cardboard box sitting on the bed, propped against Steve's stone leg.

"Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," Bucky read. He peered in to the open top of the box. "They look like jellybeans."

"They are," Jim explained. "But, like, freaky jellybeans. They say every flavor, and they really are."

"They don't just taste like normal sweets," Peggy explained. "Some of them do, but there's also things like grass, dirt, candlewax…"

"Snot," Gabe interjected.

Bucky's lip curled and Kelly laughed. "Not knowing what you're getting's part of the fun," she said. "Come on, Bucky, do play with us."

"Alright," he agreed. "How does it work?"

"It's not really a game," Steve said. "We were just gonna go around and take turns tasting them."

"Et puisque c'est votre boîte, Monsieur Falsworth, vous devriez aller en premier," Jacques said, waving at the box.

"Very well," Monty said. He eyed the box and pulled out a pinkish-red bean. "What do we think, lads? And ladies," he added quickly.

"Strawberry?" Steve guessed.

"Cotton candy," said Bucky.

"Bubblegum," suggested Peggy.

"Something fruity," Dugan said.

"A hot dog," guessed Jim.

Monty popped it in his mouth and chewed slowly. "Bacon," he said as he swallowed. "I suppose you were closest, Jim. Right, Dugan, you have a go," he said, pointing to his left.

Dugan ended up with a lemon-flavored one, much to the disappointment of the rest of them. Jacques was next, and began chewing and could not swallow a yellowish-white one that turned out to be earwax.

Steve went next, eyeing the green bean in his hand with trepidation.

"That could be anything," Jim said. "I think it's too dark to be grass."

"Maybe some other kind of plant," said Bucky. "Like spinach."

"Seaweed maybe?" Kelly suggested.

"It could be pond scum," Peggy said, smiling apologetically but also like she wanted to see what would happen. "My brother had one of those once."

Steve's nose wrinkled, but he screwed his eyes shut and ate it. His nose remained wrinkled as he chewed.

"Pond scum?" Dugan wondered.

Steve shook his head. "I think it's broccoli. It's not bad, but…ech!" He swallowed and shook his head. "It's not good either."

Bucky picked one that was a pale yellow, which turned out to be chicken soup. It was…different. Like Steve's broccoli, it wasn't bad, but that just wasn't something a jellybean should taste like.

They spent a while going through the box. Some of the more normal flavors included things like cherry, bubblegum and mint. Unusual flavors ranged from mud to sawdust, bark, pine needles, garlic and eggs. Steve started a coughing fit and Nurse Rains had to come over with an inhaler after he bit into a pepper-flavored one. She allowed them to keep playing a little unhappily after he was breathing okay again. There were also some truly disgusting flavors in there—Jacques had spat out the earwax-flavored one, Bucky had choked on one that tasted like sour milk, and Dugan had gotten one that tasted like shoe polish and turned around and vomited in the trash can. Gabe got a grayish-green one that he swore was the snot-flavored one, and Kelly declared she wouldn't be kissing him again until he brushed his teeth.

"Man," Steve said, shaking his head once they were done and the others left with well-wishes and promises to come back later. "Magic candy is weird." He smacked his lips unhappily, sticking out his tongue. "That chalk jelly bean was like half an hour ago, and the taste still won't go away."

"I wonder how they get it to taste like all that weird stuff?" Bucky mused.

"I don't want to think about it too hard," Steve said. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Me?" Bucky asked, surprised. "Yeah. Why?"

Steve shrugged. "You seemed kind of upset when you came in earlier."

"Oh." He hadn't thought he looked upset, but Steve would notice something like that. "Yeah. I just…I had a fight with Vicki on my way up here. She's free now, by the way. If you're still holding off on making your move with Peggy," he added, shooting for nonchalant.

"Sorry," Steve said sympathetically, not playing along. "What happened?"

Bucky shook his head. "Just stupid stuff." He could tell Steve, but he didn't want him to think he felt sorry for him or anything. "Nothing important. It's fine." And it was.

Steve looked at him, then seemed to decide he believed him and nodded.

"How are you doing?" Bucky asked, gesturing at Steve's rocky left side.

"Alright, I guess," Steve replied. "I mean, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't actually feel like anything. Except this part right here," he added, gesturing with his right hand to the stone patch on his stomach. "If I don't sit right, it digs into my ribs. Then it hurts."

"You need help sitting up?" Bucky asked. Steve had slumped down over the course of the afternoon and was leaning a little awkwardly to the side.

"Yeah," Steve admitted, glowering at his stone arm. "This thing's not much help." His shoulder hadn't been hit, so he could move it a little, but it was clumsy and heavy. Bucky grabbed his arms and pulled him up, readjusting the pillows behind him so he was sitting straighter.

"Better?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah. Thanks. At least I can move," Steve said. He nodded across the ward to where a group of people was sitting around one of the other beds. "Kevin caught it in the back. He's got to lay flat until he gets back to normal."

Bucky grimaced. That didn't sound pleasant. He looked back at Steve and chuckled. "Remember when the worst things that happened to you in school were people beating you up and taking your lunch money?"

Steve grinned. "Yeah, but could you see me in a playground fight with this baby?" he asked, gesturing at his left arm. "If I could get it swinging, I could pack a hell of a punch."

* * *

The end of Steve's fourth year at Hogwarts ended on a somber note. The air raids at school had become more frequent. A frightened hush fell over the Great Hall every time the morning owls came in—it seemed like they weren't bringing anything but bad news any more. Erskine and Phillips were gone more than they were there, leaving for official Auror business and coming back looking distinctly battered. Monty was gone for a week after his family's home in London had been destroyed. Nazi bombs, not Grindelwald. Thankfully, they'd all been safe in the bomb shelter. Jacques had been quieter than usual, solemn and angry, after receiving word from his cousin that their old village in France had been levelled by dragon fire. Dugan was trying to act tough and not worried at all about the fact that his two older brothers had been drafted. Jim was worried about his family—they'd taken the government's offer to move away from the West Coast, which kept them out of the internment camps so many other Japanese-Americans were ending up in. They were currently trying to keep a low profile somewhere in Kansas right now. Gabe's dad had signed up for a unit out of New York, and it had been a while since they'd heard from him. Peggy's father had been called back into the Navy. Giants were rampaging across Eastern Europe. In the States, non-magical communities were facing an increasing number of 'accidents' in the way of house fires, car crashes, gas leaks or smallpox outbreaks. In Europe, wizards with non-magical heritage were grouping together or going into hiding, looking for protection in numbers evens as those numbers were whittled away. Nazis were beating back the French Resistance and pushing the Allied troops further and further west all the time. Nobody was saying it, but everybody was thinking it: Were they going to lose?

Steve was sitting out by the lake with his sketchpad, staring across the water. He was tapping his pencil against the sketchbook, thinking. He hadn't made a mark on the paper. What would happen if they lost? This was such a big war—both of them. What would happen to people like Jacques, whose family had stood so vocally against Grindelwald and were subsequently wiped out by Hydra? If they won, would they hunt down people like him? What would happen to people like Jim, who were being turned on by the countries they called home? He came out of his reverie for a moment at a sharp pain in his hand—he'd snapped his pencil in half and the jagged end was stabbing his palm. He wiped the blood absently on the leg of his pants and resumed tapping the bigger piece of pencil. It wasn't right. It just wasn't right. The Nazis and Grindelwald were coming from this place of stupid, imagined superiority, but America was supposed to be better than that. Whatever happened to 'liberty and justice for all'? The pencil snapped in his hand again and he threw it into the grass with a growl.

What would happen to people like Gabe and Kelly? They were safe here, their non-magical heritage a non-issue (at least, as far as education went), but what happened if Grindelwald won? What about people like him? Would his half-blood status keep him that much safer? He leaned back against the tree behind him with a sigh. The world was so messed up, and he didn't really understand why. Even worse, he didn't know what to do about it. The world was messed up, but it was huge. And he was awfully small.

"Hello, Steve," came a voice from behind him. Peggy was standing a few feet away. "Have you got room for one more?"

"Sure," he said, shifting a little, inviting her to sit next to him. She smiled and sat.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Why?"

She nodded down at the smear of blood on his palm and the pieces of pencil in the grass. He sighed and shrugged. "Just thinking," he said.

She nodded. "There's a lot to think about, isn't there?"

"Are you okay?" he asked after a brief silence. She was fiddling with the frayed end of her Gryffindor scarf.

"Dad's ship left this morning," she said. "He can't tell us where."

"I'm sorry." That had to be scary.

She shrugged one shoulder. "He can communicate with mum using his Patronus, and she said she'd pass on what he said in her letters, so…It's something, at least."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He bet Gabe wished his dad could do that. "How long will he be gone?"

"They think a month for this assignment. We're lucky, really. Dad and one of the officers are the only wizards aboard—they're the only ones who can communicate with their families, even if they have to do it in secret. All those other families, they just have to wait."

Steve smiled sadly, debated and then decided against putting a hand on her shoulder. "That doesn't mean it's not hard for you. You're still allowed to worry about him."

She smiled, grateful that he understood.

"So, what's on your mind, then?" she asked, a touch too cheerfully, clearly not wanting to dwell on her father's deployment any longer. She picked up the pencil segments and rolled them in her fingers.

Steve sighed. "Just…All of this. The war. Wars," he corrected himself. "So many people are getting hurt, and for what?" He sighed again. "I mean, I know what we're fighting, but why do we even have to? I hate it when people think cause they're bigger or stronger or whatever, it gives them the right to hurt someone else."

"I've noticed that," Peggy said, smiling gently to let him know she wasn't teasing.

He smiled a little at that. "Bucky says that I get into fights that are too big for me, and maybe I do, but if there's no one else to do it…Well, somebody should, you know?" Peggy nodded for him to continue. "But then, all this is happening, and I sometimes wonder, you know, what's the point? People are still gonna hate each other, or hurt each other. I'm not really doing anything to help."

Peggy looked at him thoughtfully. "I don't think that's true."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Bucky is right—you do bite off more than you can chew sometimes," she said with a small smile. "But you do it for a good reason, and people notice. You were up in the infirmary yesterday afternoon, right? What was that for?"

"Robert Mullins hit me with a Conjunctivitis Curse." He knew she knew that, and he was pretty sure she was making a point, but he wasn't sure what it was.

"Why?" she asked.

"He was getting really handsy with Helen Thorpe and wouldn't stop when she told him to. So I punched him."

"And you think Helen just forgot about that?"

"Well, no, I…" He hadn't really thought about that. "But that's not why I did it. I didn't do it so she would think I was some great guy or whatever."

"Then why did you do it?" Peggy asked. She looked like she knew the answer and was just waiting for him to get there.

He shrugged. "She needed help."

Peggy smiled. "Exactly. You throw yourself into these situations, that, not to be rude, but more often than not end up with you getting hurt. And you know that's going to happen, and you do it anyway. Because it's the right thing to do. People notice that, Steve. More than that, people _need_ that."

"I'm still not really following you." He felt like he was close, but the point was just out of reach.

"Sometimes, it's easier to let something happen than it is to get involved. It takes courage to step in, and you…" She shook her head, smiling. "I don't know why you're not in Gryffindor, I really don't. But when a person sees someone else showing a bit of courage, well, it's easier for them to do it too. Maybe next time Helen sees Robert getting fresh with another girl, she'll walk over and have her back. Maybe next time Jimmy Tooms hears Ethan Greene call someone a Mudblood, he'll tell him to shut the hell up. Maybe next time some big kid is beating up a little First-Year, five other Firsties will swarm in to help. Courage is in short supply these days. And I think, more than you realize, you help people find it."

Steve looked down at the grass, pondering her words. It sounded…Well, it sounded a hell of a lot more noble than it felt, when she put it like that. He wasn't sure how comfortable he was with that. He helped people because it was the right thing to do. Because he didn't like bullies. He didn't know about this role model business.

Peggy shifted next to him. "Not everyone's like you, Steve. Sometimes, they need to be reminded of what the right thing is."

He looked up at her and she smiled. She made it sound so big and important. And, well, it was nice to hear. (Nice too, that she seemed to think that highly of him, though he was afraid to go down that road any farther than that.) He still thought maybe she was making it a bigger thing than it was but he couldn't help feeling a little better and smiling back. "I just wish I could do more," he said.

Her smile widened. "Well, we all wish that," she said. "Sometimes I just think…" She sighed thoughtfully and leaned back against the tree. "If I was of age, I would join up. My mum would have a fit of course," she added with a grin. "But I'd like to get out there. Show all those wizards that just because I'm a witch, it doesn't mean I can't fight. Do something…something that _really_ mattered, you know? Show Grindelwald how wrong he is."

Steve laughed suddenly, and Peggy arched an eyebrow at him. "No, no," he explained hurriedly. "I'm not laughing at you. I just—this image popped into my head of you walking up and punching Grindelwald on the jaw."

Peggy smiled then. "It would get my point across."

"And very eloquently too," Steve said.

She laughed and got to her feet, offering a hand to Steve to pull him up too. "Here," she said, holding up the hand with the pencil fragments. She tapped it with her wand and they fused back together.

"Thanks," Steve said, taking the pencil. It was one of his good ones.

"Shall we go in before it starts raining?" Peggy asked, casting a dubious eye up at the sky.

Steve agreed and they walked back to the castle together. They parted ways outside the Great Hall as she headed up for Gryffindor Tower. Steve stopped to wait for Bucky, who was coming in from the hall to the Hufflepuff common room. That was odd. He'd thought Bucky had Quidditch this afternoon.

"Hey, Buck," he said, waiting for Bucky to tease him about coming in with Peggy, or perhaps the way she'd put a hand on his shoulder and smiled before walking away. His smile fell, though, when he saw Bucky's face. "Bucky, what's wrong? What happened?"

Bucky shook his head, making a clumsy gesture with the piece of parchment in his hand. "Pop got called back up," he said. "He's leaving for North Africa in a week. Day after we get home."

Steve felt something tighten in his chest and stepped forward, taking the letter from Bucky. He recognized Mrs. Barnes' graceful handwriting. This letter contained no news from the neighborhood, or word about their health or how Becky was doing in school. Just a brief message, saying what Bucky had just told him.

Mr. Barnes…Well, he wasn't Steve's father, but he was as close as Steve had ever gotten to having one. Steve swallowed down a worried lump in his throat. He was a great wizard, though. He'd be alright. He'd made it home from World War One alright, hadn't he? He didn't say any of that. It felt hollow even as he thought it. He tried hard not to think of Gabe's dad, who had also made it home from the first World War alright and who nobody had heard from in three weeks.

"I…" He really didn't know what to say.

Bucky nodded. Then he sniffed and squared his shoulders back, taking the letter back from Steve. "He'll be okay," he said, and Steve wasn't sure which of them he was trying to convince.

"Yeah," Steve said. He hoped he was right.

* * *

Bucky stood with his father on the dock. His unit would be boarding soon. His dad patted him on the shoulder and looked him in the eye. He hardly had to look down to do that anymore. "I hope you'll stay out of trouble while I'm gone," he said with a smile.

"I'll try, sir," Bucky replied with a smile of his own.

His pop nodded, squeezing Bucky's shoulder. The smile was still there, but it was serious too. "I'm trusting you to take care of things while I'm away. Your mother, Rebecca and Steve—you'll look after them for me, won't you?"

"I will, Pop," Bucky said solemnly. "I promise."

"I know," his pop replied, smiling. "They couldn't be in better hands." Bucky felt pride swell in his chest, even as tears threatened to prickle from behind his eyes. "I'm proud of you, son," his father continued. "You're a fine man. And a good wizard. You're going to be alright."

The tears started to sting sharper, and Bucky threw his arms around his father's neck and hugged him. "Thanks, Pop," he whispered. He hugged him tighter. "Just come home safe, alright?"

"I'll be alright, son," he assured him, hugging him back just as tightly. "Don't you worry about me."

A sharp blast from the ship's horn signaled that they were ready for boarding. Bucky pulled back, wiped hastily at his eyes with his sleeve, and smiled. "I love you, Pop," he said. "Be careful out there."

"I will," his pop said, nodding and smiling before leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. "I love you too, Bucky."

Bucky stepped back, and Becky moved forward for a final kiss and hug goodbye. She was crying when they pulled apart. Steve went to shake his hand, and Bucky's pop pulled him in for a hug too. Then he waved to them all and walked toward where the men were lining up, Bucky's ma holding tightly to his hand.

Bucky looped an arm over Becky's shoulder, and she turned and hid her face in his side. "It'll be alright, Munchkin," he told her. "He'll be back. You'll see." He really hoped he was right.

Bucky's ma came back, and they stood on the dock and waved as he went up the gangplank. They didn't leave until the ship pulled out of the harbor. His ma sighed and Bucky leaned over and hugged her. "I did this once before, and I hoped I would never have to do it again," she said with another sigh.

Bucky nodded. That's right. She had had to watch his pop go off to war before, hadn't she? He wondered if it was easier for her this time, since she wasn't being left alone, or if it was harder, because of how much more she knew his pop was leaving.

"He'll be alright, Ma," he told her.

"Oh, I know he will, sweetie," she said, pulling him in a little closer and rubbing his arm. "And I've got you three to keep me company for a while, at least," she added with a smile. "Alright," she said, straightening her shoulders. "I've got to go to work. Rebecca, did you still want to come?"

"Yes, Mama," Becky said, drying the last of her tears. "I'll come."

She nodded. "Will you boys be alright on your own for lunch?" she asked.

"Yes, Ma'am," Steve told her. Bucky nodded.

She and Becky left. Bucky wasn't sure what they should do. It was school break, and the day was young and there were lots of possibilities, but, well, he didn't really feel like doing any of them. Not right now.

He turned to Steve to tell him he could go on if he wanted, but Steve had sat down on the edge of the dock and pulled a stale piece of bread from his pocket. He tore a corner off and tore it into smaller pieces to scatter on the water below where some gulls were waiting. He looked back at Bucky. "You okay?"

Bucky sighed and sat down next to him. "Yeah."

Steve nodded. "You don't have to be," he said, tossing down another bit of bread.

Bucky huffed a small laugh. "I'm mostly okay," he amended. "I just hope he comes back."

Steve nodded. "Yeah." He tore the bread into smaller pieces. "It's different," he said after a few minutes. "You know? Like, we had the air raids and the Dementors and stuff, but there was a kind of…far away-ness to most of the war when you read about it in the papers."

He stopped himself and looked down, as if he was suddenly worried he'd said too much, but Bucky got it. It was always gonna feel more real when it was someone you cared about going off into it. And Steve was allowed to be worried about him too—George Barnes was the closest thing to a father Steve had ever had. "Yeah," Bucky agreed. "I guess we're part of the club now, huh, Stevie?" he said, letting Steve know he wasn't intruding on some private family concern—he was family too. "The war was hitting everybody at school somehow. Guess it was our turn."

"Not the greatest club to be in," Steve said with a small smile.

Bucky laughed. "Yeah, I wouldn't mind losing my membership card."

Steve passed Bucky half of the bread, and they sat in silence until the birds had eaten it all. "D'you think your dad will send messages with his Patronus?" Steve asked. Bucky turned to look at him, curious. Steve shrugged. "I didn't know you could do that. But Peggy said her dad talks to her mom that way when he's off with the Navy."

"Huh," Bucky mused. "I've never seen anyone do that before. I'll bet he could, though." He was quiet for a minute. "Hey, do you think…What Ma said, about having the three of us to keep her company. I mean, Becky's supposed to start school this year with us…" It hadn't occurred to him—and he felt stupid that it hadn't yet—that come the start of the school year, his ma would be left at home alone.

Steve nodded. He'd caught it too. "She did say 'for a while'," he said.

"Yeah, but…" Bucky trailed off. He didn't like the idea of her home alone with nothing but worry to keep her company.

Steve nudged him with his shoulder. "Hey, you know what? If it comes around to September, and she needs us to stay, then we'll stay."

Bucky looked up at him. He _had_ been thinking about staying home with his ma, maybe getting a job or something, but that hadn't been what he'd meant. Becky should go to school, and Steve, well, Steve had a life there, they shouldn't _all_ have to change their plans. "Steve…"

Steve's eyes were blazing sincerity, not pity. Family took care of each other—whether that meant the Barneses taking Steve in, or Steve putting his plans on hold to help look after the people who looked after him. Bucky couldn't say no to that without taking back what he'd just said about Steve being part of the family. He smiled, touched. "Yeah," he said with a nod. "Yeah, I guess we will."

* * *

_Let me know what you guys are thinking-I'd love to hear from you as the story picks up pace!_


	18. Necessary Evil

_A/N: A little switch in POV to see what's going on in the adult wizarding world as the war heats up. It's not going terribly well.  
_

* * *

"No," Abraham Erskine said vehemently. The Hogwarts staff was scattered across the continent for the school break, each doing their part for the war effort. Those who could be reached had been called together and gathered in a small conference room in the Ministry of Magic. "Minister, do you hear what you're saying?"

"You can't honestly think this is a good idea," growled Chester Phillips.

"They are _children_," insisted Caroline Marsh.

"Do you think I don't know that?" the Minister of Magic snapped. He sighed, long and deep, drawing a hand down his face. "Do you think this was _anyone's_ first choice?"

"I think the government has always been willing to send those who are too young to fight to die for them," Gwyneth Rains said coldly.

"Don't lay your grievances with the Muggle government at the feet of the Ministry of Magic," warned the Minister.

"I've grievances to spare for you," she replied.

"Not that they aren't valid, Gwyneth," Phillips said with a sympathy that would have startled his students. "But let's stick to the matter at hand."

The school nurse nodded in agreement, though she continued to glare at the Minister.

"Now," Phillips said, turning back to the Minister. "Minister Brandt. Why don't you tell us why in God's name anyone at the Ministry thought this was a good idea?"

"No one ever thought it was a good idea," the Minister corrected. "But it's one of the few we have left."

"Well, that's my confidence raised, then," muttered Marsh.

"Is this really how we want to win the war?" Erskine asked. "By using children to fight our battles for us?"

"You don't understand," Brandt sighed. "If we don't do this, we _aren't_ going to win the war. You've all been out there. I know you've seen it." The gathered teachers were silent at this proclamation. "We're fighting two wars here," Brandt continued. "And we're losing." He sighed sadly, rubbing his temples. "It's too much. Too soon. Do you have any idea how many wizards died in the Great War? There aren't enough of us."

"And lowering the fighting age to fifteen is going to help?" Erskine asked. "Minister, you realize you're talking about Fifth-Year students? They don't have the knowledge to pass an O.W.L.; how do you expect them to stay alive on the battlefield?"

Brandt turned to Erskine angrily. "No one is suggesting sending a squad of untrained fifteen-year-olds into combat, Professor."

"If you're going to train them, then, why not just let them stay in school?" Rains asked.

"Abraham is right, Minister," Marsh said. "They're not prepared for a future without combat yet, never mind one with it."

"They may not have either future if we don't do this," came the quiet voice of Nicholas Caan from the end of the table.

The others turned to look at the Divination teacher. "You've Seen something, Nicholas?" Rains asked.

Caan sighed. "I've Seen many things. None of them are good. In all of them, darkness. Evil. A vast, many-headed serpent, devouring everything in its path."

"We can't send children into that," Erskine said, aghast.

"I'm afraid we must," Caan said sadly. "There are too many heads and not enough swords. And the final head…" He shook his head. "I have Seen a child. A sad, brave child who takes the final head. An eagle striking the great snake from the sky."

"I don't suppose you've Seen which child?" Phillips asked, not succeeding in keeping the skepticism out of his voice. "We could just send that one in, avoid risking all the rest of them."

Caan looked up, unoffended. "Mock if you will, Chester. I know you've never put much stock in the Inner Eye. But it is what I have Seen."

"But it's awful," Marsh insisted. "We _can't_ send children into war."

"It is not called a necessary evil for nothing," Caan said.

There was silence for a long minute.

"I still can't condone it," Erskine said at last.

"Absolutely not," Rains agreed. Marsh shook her head.

"We would lose too many of them," Phillips said. "They're not ready for this."

Brandt sighed. "Unfortunately, I didn't call this meeting for your permission. This is something the magical governments of the world have agreed must be done. In schools of magic all over the world, the fighting age will be lowered to fifteen." He held up a hand, warding off protest. "They will not be conscripted. It will be voluntary. They will be trained extensively, and they will not be sent out alone. They will be kept as far from the front lines as possible, and will be under the supervision of qualified adult wizards at all times." He sighed. "The announcement will go out at the end of the week. I wanted to let you know so you could start working on how it will be handled within the school. I'm sorry." He stood and made for the door.

"This is wrong, Minister," Erskine said.

Brandt stopped. He didn't turn. "I know."


	19. A Mother's Choice

_A/N: The governments have made their decisions, but the hard part is going to hit at home. What's a mother of two sons eligible for war to do?  
_

* * *

Winnifred Barnes looked at the letter on the table in front of her. She'd been staring at it for twenty minutes, smoothing out the edges until the parchment lay quite flat. She traced a finger over one of the multiple official seals stamped across the bottom. So. They were really doing it. They were going to let the children go to war.

She couldn't pretend she hadn't seen this coming. The war was going badly. Both of them. She remembered it had been talked about last time. It hadn't worried her then. George was an adult, already fighting voluntarily. Bucky hadn't come along yet; she'd had no sons to worry about. Then it didn't happen anyway. But now it had. She could see the desperation that had driven them to make this choice, even as it sickened her to read the actual words on the page.

What was she going to do? What was she going to say? Because it was right there, accusing letters in glistening ink. It was going to be her choice. They weren't making her send her son off to war. No, that would be too easy. They were making her decide if she would let him go.

How could she let him? She could hear him right now in the living room with his sister and Steve. They were playing that game where they read a book together and acted it out. Rebecca was laughing and Bucky was making some sort of noise like a bird. He loved making silly faces and jokes to make his sister laugh. He still liked climbing trees and playing baseball, still fidgeted in his Sunday shirt and had to be reminded to clean his room. He had gotten so tall so quickly, but there were still traces of baby fat on his cheeks, still a boyish twinkle in his eye when he smiled. He still whined about getting shots. Still begged for an extra helping with dessert. He was still—though no one but his mother knew—still just a little bit scared of the dark. He was still just a child. _Her_ child. Her baby boy.

How could she not let him? He was going to want to go. Because there was something wrong that needed fixing, and that was what Bucky did. She and George, they'd always raised him to do right by other people, especially those who were weaker than him, who needed protection. Sometimes she wished they hadn't done quite such a good job. Because Bucky was a protector in his bones. Fierce and loyal and unafraid, and, oh, though she wished he could keep himself out of fights, she couldn't help but be proud of why he did it. He did it because he cared. He cared so much, and he was good and brave and strong, and if he got the chance to join this fight to stop something evil, he wasn't going to say no. She wouldn't want him to. But she didn't want him to go.

She heard Bucky laugh from the living room as whatever they were reading led Steve to start talking in a high squeaky voice like a mouse. Steve. She closed her eyes. Steve was going to want to go too. She'd never seen such an overpowering desire for justice crammed into such a tiny little body. His life had been so hard—he'd had to be tough to make it this far, and Sarah Rogers had raised a fighter. She swallowed down a lump in her throat as she thought of the friend she'd lost. She'd promised her she would take care of her son. And if bullies at school with their half-learned magic could put him in the hospital, what chance did he have against the darkest wizards of the age? He wouldn't make it a week. She would have failed her friend and lost the boy she'd come to love as a second son. The size of his heart was not matched by the size of his fists. But that wasn't going to stop him.

"Hey, Ma, we were wondering—" Bucky began, walking into the kitchen. "Ma, what's wrong?"

She stood, moving away from the table and wrapping her arms around him. He immediately moved to hug her back, even if he didn't know why. "What's the matter, Ma?" he asked softly.

"Can I just hold you for a minute?" she asked quietly.

"Okay." He sounded confused and a little worried, but he said nothing more, just hugged her and pressed a kiss to the side of her face.

She stood there with her arms around him, remembering how it felt when he was tiny and plump and squirmy and could fit into the crook of her arm. She remembered his little fist bunched in her skirts as he took his first wavering steps. She pulled back to look at him. He was so tall now. Nearly as tall as his father, and she suspected he had a few more inches to go still before he was done. She put a hand to his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb. He was going to have to start shaving soon. So grown up. But his eyes…Those beautiful stormy blue eyes that he'd gotten from his grandfather. Those eyes were so young.

She reached up a hand to brush a lock of dark hair off his forehead. Such a handsome boy. "You need a haircut," she said, tucking the strand back behind his ear.

Those beautiful stormy blue eyes blinked at her sadly. "Ma, what's wrong?" he asked again.

"It's nothing, sweetie," she said. "There's nothing wrong with your father," she assured him. She'd seen him notice the letter on the table, seen the worry building in his face, even as he tried not to push her, waiting for her to tell him. "He's alright. I was just thinking…" She didn't want to say anything about it to him yet. Not until she knew what she was going to say.

"About what?"

"About something that I promise I will share with you once I've figured it out," she told him with a smile.

He studied her for a moment. "Okay," he said. Still concerned, but trusting her. "But if there's anything I can do to help…"

Her smile widened. "I'll let you know." He was such a good boy.

What was she going to do?

* * *

_Tune in Monday to see how the tough decisions play out! In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you and what you think of the story!_


	20. Decisions To Be Made

_Little Becky Barnes is finally ready to join the Hogwarts crew, but the boys have some tough decisions and big changes coming their way.  
_

* * *

It was, well, it had been a weird break from school. In some respects, it was just like any other. There was still news of the war, but life continued on in a regular New York summer. It was hot, and kids played in the fire hydrant in the street. Bucky and Becky started swing dancing again. Steve and Bucky sat in a tree outside the stadium to see the baseball games. They went down to the pier with Becky, and ate ice cream and threw popcorn to the birds. Bucky took girls out dancing or to the movies. Steve worked on his motorcycle.

But it was different. The news from the war, while it still sounded far away, wasn't very good. The house felt weirdly empty with Bucky's pop gone. They got letters, and every now and then a large, silvery owl would swoop into the living room with a short message, speaking in his father's voice. And something was worrying his ma. She hadn't told him what yet, but he trusted that she would when she was ready. He just wished he knew what it was so he could help. He did whatever he could to help in other ways—making sure Becky and Steve were alright, doing what he could with repairs and chores around the house to make sure things kept running smoothly. He was trying to take care of everything, like his pop said, but fifteen felt awfully young to be the man of the house. And what was normal and what was different started blending together, making everything feel like they were right on the edge of something. Something was about to happen. They were just waiting.

They set out early one August morning for Thornbarrow Row, before it got too hot. Becky was finally going to Hogwarts, and it was time to get her things for school. It was hard not to smile, watching her. Bucky didn't think he'd ever seen her this excited.

They had to take a train over to Queens. Thornbarrow Row was a long alleyway behind a deli—there was a big dumpster in front of it, and wizards in the know walked straight at the dumpster and appeared in a narrow alley lined with cobblestones, magical wares from shops spilling out into tables on the street. Their first stop was the wand shop. Bucky had to grab his sister by the shoulders to get her to stop shaking and remind her to breathe. There was excited, and then there was whatever this was. "Inhale, Munchkin," he told her. "You don't calm down, you're gonna pass out, and then how're you gonna get your wand?" Steve chuckled.

They sat back against the wall as Mrs. Hazelthorpe, the old witch who made the wands, brought some out for Becky to try. Bucky remembered getting his own wand, the way he'd felt warmth rush through him and how the whole room seemed to glow as the wand touched his hand for the first time. Cherry and phoenix feather. He looked over at Steve, who was thoughtfully fingering the handle of his own wand. His was maple with an eagle's feather.

Becky squealed with delight as purple flowers shot out of the end of the wand she was holding, floating gently down to the floor like feathers. "That's the one," Mrs. Hazelthorpe said with a smile. She took the wand from Becky and placed it in a box. "Silver birch and unicorn hair. Very nice."

"Can I hold it, Mama?" Becky pleaded, reaching up her hands for the box as they headed back to the street.

"It's quite safe in my bag, dear," their ma said, smiling. "Besides, you'll want your hands free in here." They turned into a store where racks and racks of robes lined the walls.

"Welcome," greeted a smiling young man in bright blue robes. "First time to school, is it?" he guessed with a look at Becky. She nodded eagerly. "And which school are we off to, young lady?" He flicked his wand at the wall and several of the racks moved forward, offering uniforms of every color.

"Hogwarts," she said excitedly.

"Oh, international, hmm?" He flicked his wand again and a rack bearing black robes moved forward as the others shifted back.

"Bucky, are you going to need new robes this year?" his mother asked, browsing through a second-hand rack behind them as Becky hopped up in front of the mirror for measurements. "You're getting a little too tall for me to let the hem out any further, but I thought we could take it back up again and give yours to Steve, and find some in here for you."

"Oh. Well, uh…" he started. He supposed he should have brought this up before shopping day. He didn't know why he'd been thinking they were just here for Becky. He and Steve would need restocking of their supplies too. "I actually, uh, I wanted to ask you something, Ma."

She turned away from the robes. "What is it?"

"Well," he started awkwardly. "I was thinking, I mean, with Pop gone and everything…" She looked at him curiously, waiting for him to continue. "We've never all three been gone before. And I was thinking, well, I don't like for you to have to be here all alone, and maybe I could, I could stay here and help out. I could get a job and…help," he finished a little lamely

His ma was smiling as he finished, and for a moment looked like she might cry. "Bucky," she said softly. "That's very kind of you, dear. But I couldn't ask you to do that."

He shrugged. "Well, you're not. I'm offering."

She laughed a little and reached up, brushing his hair to one side. "I know," she said. Her hand came down to rest on his shoulder. "And that you would offer…" She sighed, smiling. "I sometimes forget how grown up you are. It seems like it all happened so fast. You've turned into such a fine young man. But you should finish school, sweetheart. I'll be alright by myself. Really." He opened his mouth to argue and she held up a finger, cutting him off. "Growing up you may be, but I'm still your mother, young man, and I say you're going back to school."

He smiled. Her tone was teasing but he knew she meant it. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." She smiled and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate that you would even think to ask, but I'm sure."

"Okay."

"Okay," she repeated. "Now, do you need new robes?"

"Yeah, probably," he sighed. They were getting awfully short.

The rest of the morning was spent in bookstores and apothecaries, picking up used textbooks and restocking potion ingredients. Steve needed some new vials too, considering that Ethan had 'accidentally' broken his last year. He'd repaired them a couple of times, but they kept falling apart or leaking. The last time he tried to fix one of them, it exploded, sending students diving for cover as shards of glass flew across the room. He decided to bite the bullet and get a new set.

There were other things they needed too, like shirts and shoes and pants, but they could get those back in Brooklyn. Bucky knew that meant a trip to the Salvation Army for him, and hand-me-downs for Steve. Even before his ma had died, Steve had ended up in a lot of Bucky's old stuff, though he'd gotten new things from time to time. Now it seemed like the only new things he got were his medicines, and Bucky felt bad about that. He knew money was tight, and now with Becky going to school, it was even tighter. (He and Steve were sharing all of their textbooks this year.) He hoped Steve didn't feel like he wasn't as important because he always ended up with the old stuff.

On the train ride home, Becky and his ma were sitting a couple of seats ahead of them. Becky had gotten her wand out, and as far as Bucky could tell, was just sitting there holding the box. (Their ma wouldn't let her get it out in front of everyone.) He and Steve were sitting a few seats back by a window. Steve had gotten out their new Charms textbook and was flipping through the pages. His feet were dangling just above the floor, swinging back and forth in overlarge shoes that used to be his and Bucky knew had newspaper stuffed down in the ends.

"We're gonna have to tape a couple of these pages back in," Steve said. Not critically. Just making an observation.

"Hey, Steve?" Bucky asked.

"Mm?" Steve didn't look up.

"Are you…" Bucky didn't really want to bring it up, but he kind of felt like he should. "Is it alright that you don't ever get anything new?"

Steve looked up, eyes narrowed quizzically. "What are you talking about? All we've done today is get new stuff."

"It's not new, it's…" He gestured to the book in Steve's lap. "Books with pages falling out of them. Potion vials with the measurements all scratched off, and clothes that are still kind of big for you but they're already kind of worn out 'cause they're too small for me."

"Bucky," Steve said slowly. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been wearing your old clothes since I was four."

"Yeah, but…"

Steve closed the book, folding his hands on top of it as he studied Bucky. "You mean because I live with you now," he said. "Is it alright with _you_?" he asked, instead of actually answering the question.

Bucky stopped, not having expected the question. "I don't know, it…I guess it doesn't really seem fair. I mean, just because you're littler—"

"Bucky," Steve cut him off—which was probably a good thing—before he started to ramble and get weird. "Most of your stuff is second-hand too. And we're sharing these textbooks with the pages falling out. Yeah, you get the stuff before me, but you're bigger, so it makes sense. It's not like you're in a penthouse on Park Avenue while I'm scrounging for table scraps or anything." He shook his head and gave Bucky a look—oh, that was a Sarah Rogers look. The one that meant 'you're an idiot, but I love you anyway'. "Yes. It's alright with me. It doesn't bother me or anything." He looked at him curiously. "Why?"

Bucky knew the question really was 'why now?' Steve had been living with them for over a year now. They'd done this shopping thing together before. Bucky sighed. He didn't really have a good answer. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "It's…I've been thinking about a lot of stuff lately, I guess. That was one of the things I was thinking about." His pop being gone made everything different. He was thinking about things in ways he hadn't before. He wondered if his pop worried about things like this. "I guess I just…" He sighed. This was already a weird conversation anyway. It couldn't really get weirder. "I just don't want you to feel like…like you're not…"

Steve smiled. "I don't," he said, figuring out what Bucky was trying to say and saving him from actually having to do it.

Bucky looked at him. He could tell when Steve was lying—he didn't do it often, which was probably why he wasn't very good at it. (And he only seemed to do it to spare someone else's feelings or keep them from going to any trouble on his behalf. Bucky had never seen him lie for personal gain.) He wasn't lying now. He meant it. "Good," Bucky said. Thinking back earlier in the summer to the dock, he knew that Steve still wrestled sometimes with feeling like an outsider in the family. He never had been, though. He was just as important to the rest of them as if he'd been born Steven Barnes instead of Rogers. "Good," Bucky said again. He smiled back. "So, how much of the book are we gonna have to fix?"

* * *

"Oh, good, you're both here," Mrs. Barnes said. Steve and Bucky were in their room packing their trunks to go back to school. Well, Steve was packing. Bucky was just sort of tossing things in the trunk, and Steve suspected the lid wasn't going to close. Considering how nice he knew Bucky liked his clothes to look, Steve had never understood his dislike for folding them. "I wanted to talk to you about something," she said, shutting the door behind her.

Steve and Bucky immediately sat to attention. This sounded important. Mrs. Barnes was quiet for a minute, as if unsure where to begin. "The magical governments of the world," she started at last. "The ones fighting Grindelwald, anyway, came out with a new declaration over the summer. I don't suppose either of you have heard of it?" Steve and Bucky looked at each other, then shook their heads. Mrs. Barnes nodded. "I didn't think so. I'm sure both of you would have had something to say about it before now." She gave a little smile that faded as quickly as it came.

"What it comes down to is this: They're looking for more soldiers in the fight against Grindelwald, and so the age to sign up to join has been lowered to fifteen." She was quiet as they took that in.

"Us?" Steve asked, not sure he'd heard her right. "They want us to fight?"

"They're _allowing_ you to fight," she corrected. "It's not a matter of conscription or anything like that. It's purely voluntary. It also," she said, drawing in a breath as if drawing in the courage to say the next words. "Requires parental permission. That's why I haven't said anything about it until now. I've been thinking…quite a lot about it. Discussing it with George. But, ultimately, since he's not here, it'll be my signature they'll want, not his."

"You don't want us to do it," Bucky guessed, his voice quiet.

"Of course I don't want you to do it," she said with a sad smile. Her voice was a little unsteady. "Your father being out there is bad enough, but the thought of the two of you…" She stopped and bit her lip. Bucky moved over to hug her, and after a brief hesitation, Steve joined them. She was worried about them both. She drew in a long, shaky breath and hugged them both, then pulled back slightly, one hand resting on each of their faces. "No matter how much I wish you were, you're not little boys anymore. You're old enough to make this decision, and as much as I don't like it, it should be yours to make."

She straightened up and held up a hand. "Please don't make it now. There's a few days left before school starts, and I feel like I know what both of your answers are going to be, but I really, really want you to think about it. There's a letter here with the details—" she held out a piece of parchment, which Bucky took. "Think it over, and then whatever…whatever you decide, we'll support you in that decision." She really looked like she was going to cry now, but she just smiled, kissed them both on the forehead, and left.

They stood there quietly, still absorbing what she'd just said. "Wow," Steve said at last.

Bucky nodded. "That's what she's been worrying about all summer."

Steve inclined his head. "I can see why."

"Yeah."

Bucky sat down on the floor and Steve dropped next to him, leaning in to read the letter. They would be offered the chance to sign up once they returned to school—provided their parents had approved. If they made it, they would go through extensive training, both on campus and down in Hogsmeade, before being assigned to a unit under the command of an Auror. They would be sent on low-risk missions (the idea, Steve supposed, being to free up more experienced wizards for the more dangerous ones) and would still be expected to complete as much of their schoolwork as would be reasonably possible. They would attend class when not on duty, and would be expected to sit their exams in the summer.

"So, we'd be part-time soldiers," Bucky summarized.

"What do you think?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Bucky replied. "Ma wants us to think about it. I guess she's right. You probably shouldn't do something like this lightly."

Steve nodded. He imagined Bucky's gut reaction was to sign up immediately. His certainly was. He got to his feet and went back to folding the shirts laid out on his bed, thinking of his conversation last term with Peggy under the tree._ Do something…something that really mattered, you know? Show Grindelwald how wrong he is._ He'd been wanting to do that since he'd heard of Grindelwald, well before Hydra killed his ma. He swallowed down a lump in his throat. This was his chance to make sure that no one else had to die like she did. That no more families would get torn apart. That no one would have to worry that their heritage might get them killed. What was there to think about?

But then he thought about Mrs. Barnes' face, the worry in her eyes and the waver in her voice. Low-risk missions didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. And he, well, he wasn't exactly good at magic, was he? And he was so small. He could get really, really hurt doing something like this. Maybe worse. He thought of Peggy's words again—it's not like that had stopped him before. He thought of Mrs. Barnes again, and the tear that slipped from her eye before she left the room. Could he do that to her? Give her one more person to worry about? One more part of her family that might never come home? But could he just sit by? People were getting hurt, and they were giving him the chance to help stop it—could he really just do nothing?

Bucky was right. You shouldn't do something like this lightly.

Over the next few days, Steve thought about it a lot. He could tell Bucky was doing the same. By some unspoken agreement, they didn't discuss it with each other. It was a big decision, and Steve didn't want Bucky making his based on what Steve was doing. Bucky had the same idea. Instead, they tried to make the last few days as normal as possible while still giving it as much thought as they could. They did chores and helped around the house. Listened to the radio. Answered Becky's myriad questions about Hogwarts. Told jokes and tried to get Mrs. Barnes to laugh.

On the last night, it was Steve's turn to wash the dinner dishes. Mrs. Barnes came over and grabbed a towel, drying things as he rinsed them off. "So," she started. "Have you come to any kind of decision?"

Steve nodded down at the soapy water. "Yes, ma'am."

"And?" she prompted.

Steve bit his lip and looked up. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Barnes, I…I have to do it." He'd thought it over long and hard, and kept coming back to the fact that no matter how much it hurt, or how dangerous it was, he couldn't do nothing when he had the chance to do something.

To his surprise, she nodded, not looking upset. "I know," she replied. "That's what I thought you would say."

Steve looked up from the pan he was scrubbing. "You're not mad?" he asked carefully.

"Mad?" she laughed. "No, Steve, I'm not mad."

"But you didn't want us to go."

"I don't want you to go. I didn't want George to go." She huffed a humorless laugh. "I didn't want this whole war to happen." She sighed. "We don't always get what we want." She set the dry plates in a stack. "And just because I don't like it, it doesn't mean it was the wrong choice. It's wrong that you should have to make that choice, but…It's not wrong to make it. When things are broken, it…it takes some hard choices to put them back together again." She turned to look down at him. "I'm never going to like the fact that you, or Bucky, or George could be out there getting hurt, because I love you and I don't want anything to happen to you. But it doesn't mean it's not a brave, good thing you're doing. It doesn't mean I'm not proud of you."

Steve looked up at her. "You are?" he whispered, something sharp stinging behind his eyes.

She nodded. "I am. Very much so."

Steve didn't know what to say to that, so he just leaned forward and hugged her, the stinging in his eyes prickling into tears that pooled in their corners. She rested her head on top of his, just like his ma used to do. "Your mother would be proud of you too," she said softly. "Even more worried than I am. But so proud." He couldn't keep the tears from falling then.

"Now," she said after a minute, pulling back and running a hand down the side of his face, tucking away a wayward strand of hair. "I don't want to dampen your convictions, but I do want you to be prepared for the fact they might not take you. There is your health to be considered, you know." Steve nodded. He was aware of that. "But if you make it," she continued, cupping his face in both hands. "If you make it, promise me you'll be careful, sweetheart." Her eyes were watering now.

Steve nodded. "I promise," he said. She smiled and kissed him gently on the cheek and straightened up, dabbing at her eyes with the dish towel.

"I'll hold you to that," she said. She smiled. "It sounds like Bucky's finished in the bathroom. Why don't you go and get cleaned up? We'll all need to get to bed soon so we can have an early start in the morning. I'll finish up here."

Steve nodded and headed for the hallway. "Mrs. Barnes," he said, stopping in the door. She looked back at him. "I don't want to make you worry." He was touched at her concern for him. "I'll be really careful. I swear."

"Good," she said. She nodded toward the hallway. "Now, go on."

A little later, Steve got into bed, waiting for Bucky to turn out the light. "So, um, did you talk to your ma?" he asked.

Bucky's hand hovered over the light switch. "Mm hmm," he nodded. He looked back at Steve. "Did you?"

"Yeah. What'd you say?"

"I'm gonna do it," he said.

Steve nodded. That's what he figured Bucky would do. He was relieved he wouldn't have to try this alone. "Me too."

Bucky looked at Steve for a long moment. "I guess we're doing it."

It was…It was real now. "I guess we are."

* * *

It was hard, leaving his ma at the train station this time. Just seeing her standing alone on the platform, one hand over her heart as she waved them off with the other…Bucky wondered for about the thousandth time if he was doing the right thing.

"Where do we go now, Jay?" Becky asked, tugging on his sleeve as the train pulled out of the station and his ma was swept out of view. Bucky felt a sudden knot in his stomach—he hoped that wouldn't be the last time he saw her. He shook the thought away. He would come home.

He hitched a smile onto his face and looked down at Becky. "We should go find somewhere to sit. Gabe's probably already got a compartment—run on down and see if you can find him. Me and Steve will get the stuff." She nodded and ran off, poking her head into different compartments. She waved when she found him.

"You okay?" Steve asked, picking up the handles of Becky's trunk and stacking it on top of his. He and Bucky each took a handle and picked them up, Bucky dragging his own trunk behind.

Bucky shrugged. "Just worried about Ma. I hate to leave her all alone."

"Yeah." Steve nodded. "At least she's not completely alone. I mean, the Garcias are there, and the Kowalskis, and Mrs. O'Brien," he reminded him. "They'll look after her." He smiled encouragingly. "She'll be alright."

Bucky nodded. He'd forgotten about their friends back home, but it was true. They wouldn't leave his ma to worry all by herself.

"Besides," Steve added, hitching his arm up as he adjusted his grip on the trunks. "Once we're doing this Army stuff, we'll write her all the time so she'll know we're okay."

Bucky nodded again. Truth be told, he wasn't thrilled about Steve signing up for 'this Army stuff'. Not that he thought Steve didn't have the heart for it—Bucky didn't know anyone braver or more determined than Steve Rogers. But Bucky also knew that Steve was tiny and sickly and had a heart that got easily overworked and he didn't breathe very well some of the time. He knew—while Steve could pull off a hell of a shield spell—his command of magic was tenuous at best. This wasn't Ethan Green or Declan or that big dumb Slytherin redhead. This was an actual war, with dark wizards and powerful magic. Steve would give it his all, but Bucky was afraid his all just wouldn't be enough. What if he couldn't protect Steve while they were out there? What if he lost him?

Worrying about that had kept him up most of the night, and at one point he'd gotten up to get a drink of water and found his ma sitting on the couch in the living room. She'd invited him to come and sit next to her, looping her arm over him and covering him with part of the blanket she had draped over her shoulders. Bucky wasn't going to lie and say the thought of going to war didn't scare him. But it was the right thing to do, and he hoped he would do it well, and right there, curled up against his mother's side like he was a little boy again, he didn't feel afraid.

She'd asked him what was wrong, and he told her what was worrying him. She said it scared her too, but that she didn't think it was all that likely that they'd take Steve, because of his health and all. Bucky hadn't considered that, and, though he knew how much it would hurt Steve to be turned down, he'd felt encouraged by the thought that his best friend would be kept safe. He'd also felt guilty that his ma wouldn't get the same reassurance about him, and she told him to stop being silly and reiterated her earlier words about how proud she was of him. He'd fallen asleep leaning on her shoulder.

They joined Gabe in the compartment he'd found, and Dugan helped them lift the trunks into the racks above. Becky was sitting in the corner looking slightly awed, and Bucky quickly introduced her to Jim and Dugan, who were very welcoming. Tucked into the corner behind Jim, so quiet that Bucky almost missed her, was a small girl who looked like she was not certain at all that she wanted to be on this train. Jim introduced her as his sister, Esther, and she looked only marginally less nervous after everyone said hello. Jim got up to help with the trunks, and Becky slipped into his seat, smiling at Esther and talking with her softly.

Jim looked at the girls and then smiled at Bucky. "Esther's not normally this shy," he said quietly. "But I think today is way too much new stuff getting thrown at her at once."

Bucky smiled back. "Well, Becky's never met a stranger." He thought back to Steve's first few weeks at their house after his ma died. His sister had a knack for figuring out how to put people at ease.

They all settled in and started catching up on each other's summers. Jim's family had gotten a little more settled in Kansas, finding their neighbors far less suspicious of them than they had been in California. (Jim still wasn't sold on the Midwest, though. Too much corn, not enough ocean.) Dugan's brothers were making it okay—they were somewhere in France last time they'd heard. Gabe's dad, thankfully, was alright too—his unit had been pinned down for a while, but he was back to where he could communicate with them now. All three of them were planning to sign up when they got school.

The compartment got a little crowded once they hit England and Jacques and Monty joined them. Peggy popped in to say hello, but carried on to sit with some of her other friends. Steve stared after her like a lost puppy as she left. Bucky did not laugh.

"Jay," Becky whispered as she helped him dig through his backpack for the sandwiches his ma had packed. "That's Peggy, right? Is she the girl Steve's sweet on?" He did laugh then.

"Yes," he replied. "But you be nice to him about it."

Becky looked affronted. "I was gonna! I just wanted to know." She looked back at the door where Peggy had disappeared. "She's real pretty." Bucky agreed that she was and handed her a sandwich. She took it and went and sat with Esther again.

It started raining as they moved farther north, which made it hard to stay awake. Bucky jolted awake with a start when they pulled into the station at Hogsmeade. Steve was asleep against his shoulder, not drooling, thankfully. Jim was, though, face plastered against the window. Esther giggled a little as she poked him awake.

They stumbled off the train, the sharp, cold air waking them the rest of the way up. Bucky pointed Becky to where she was supposed to join the rest of the First-Years, and she gave him a little wave and set off, taking Esther's hand. The boys bundled into the carriages that Bucky assumed were still pulled by the invisible demon-horse things. Steve did not comment on them, but then, they hadn't bothered him much for a while.

Once they were seated in the Great Hall, Professor Phillips came in, a line of First-Years trailing behind him. They looked awfully small. Becky waved excitedly at him. Esther looked like she was about to faint.

"That sure seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?" Steve asked, nudging Bucky's arm as the Sorting Hat was placed on the stool at the front.

Bucky huffed a laugh. "It sure does." He remembered for the first time in a long time what the hat had said to him—that loyalty would save his life. He wondered suddenly if the war was what it meant. Well, but, that was good, though, wasn't it? If it was gonna save his life, then he'd be okay, right?

He was pulled from his thoughts as Phillips pulled out a scroll of names and started to read. Becky was third to be Sorted, and Bucky was surprised when the hat shouted out, "Ravenclaw!" She slid down from the stool, smiling at the table of cheering blue and bronze, but kept shooting glances over her shoulder at Bucky, as though she wasn't sure this was right.

"I would've thought she'd be Hufflepuff," Steve said curiously.

"Yeah, me too. Aren't families in the same Houses?" Bucky replied.

"Not always," Helen said, leaning across the table. "I've got a brother in Slytherin. And Donovan's got a sister in every House and a brother in Gryffindor. The hat's got its reasons, I guess."

The Sorting finished—Esther was Sorted into Ravenclaw too, and fairly ran down the steps and latched on to Jim. The meal started, and Becky rushed over to the Hufflepuff table. "Jay!" she exclaimed.

"Hey!" he greeted, ruffling her hair. She scowled, swatting his hand away. "Congratulations, little Ravenclaw! Not too shabby."

She blinked, confused. "You didn't want me in Hufflepuff?" she asked softly.

"Hey, no!" he said. "Of course I wanted you in Hufflepuff," he told her, putting his hands on her arms. "Don't be silly." His eyes were serious even as he smiled at her. "Of course I wanted you to be in my same House, but there's nothing wrong with Ravenclaw."

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." He smiled. "You always were the brains of the family anyway," he said, and there was that smile he was looking for. "You'll be fine over there. You've got your pal Esther. And Gabe and Jim, you know them. They can show you the ropes for Smarty-Pants Tower." She giggled. "And, hey," he finished seriously. "I'm always here for you, Munchkin. You come find me any time, alright?" She smiled and nodded and he hugged her. "Now get over there and eat your dinner."

"G'night, Jay," she said with a smile. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, you will," he assured her.

He waved her off and turned back to his meal. Steve nudged him. "Based on the way Helen's watching you," he whispered. "I think she thinks that was the sweetest thing she's ever seen."

"Shut up," Bucky said, elbowing him back. He did shoot a quick smile across the table at Helen, though, and she smiled back and blushed before looking down at her plate. Steve cleared his throat significantly, and Bucky elbowed him in the ribs.

Once the meal was done, the Headmaster got up for the usual announcements. He paused at the end before saying, "And now, we have one more announcement pertaining to those in the Fifth Year and above. The rest of you may adjourn to your dormitories, and we shall see you all bright and early for classes in the morning!"

The younger students filed out, chatting happily amongst themselves. The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh-Years stayed in their seats, a low whisper running between them. Would this be what they all thought it was?

Professor Phillips stood up and took the podium. Silence fell immediately as he cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began. "As you are all no doubt aware, the Ministry of Magic and other governing magical bodies have enacted some new regulations this summer." Maybe it was Bucky's imagination, but he didn't think Phillips looked at all happy about it. Not that he ever looked happy about much of anything, but now even less so than usual.

"Over the summer, the fighting age for those wishing to join the war against Grindelwald has been lowered to fifteen. Which means all of you are now eligible for service." No, Bucky wasn't imagining it. Phillips looked distinctly displeased. So did the rest of the staff at the table behind him. He didn't think he'd seen a frown like that on Erskine's face before.

"Those of you wishing to enlist need to turn in your parental permission forms to your Head of House before dinner tomorrow. Selections will be made by the weekend, and training will begin the following Monday." Phillips sighed. "I would caution all of you not to make this decision lightly. This is a war, not a game. There are dark wizards out there who are not going to hold back just because you're under-age. People are going to die, and you could very easily be one of them. Be smart about this." He paused, sighed again. "Good night." He waved them to the doors and stepped away from the podium. The Great Hall was instantly abuzz with chatter again.

"Phillips sure didn't look happy about that, did he?" Jim asked as they made their way toward the door.

"And did you see the look on Rains' face?" Monty added. "I swear there was steam coming out of her ears."

"It's kind of a big deal, though, isn't it?" Steve asked. "I mean, it's their job to take care of us, they're probably all worried."

Bucky nodded, knowing Steve was thinking of his ma.

There were murmurs of agreement from the others. Bucky wondered what sort of discussions they'd had with their parents about it.

"I got a feeling it means the war's not going so well," Dugan said. "I don't reckon they'd pull us in if they had any other choice."

"Well, hopefully, we'll be able to do something to help," Peggy said.

They broke up after that, heading for their respective dormitories. Everyone was tired, and it seemed kind of pointless to talk about other things after something huge like this. They all just got cleaned up and went to bed instead. Jacques didn't even sneak off to the kitchen for leftovers.

It took Bucky a while to fall asleep. He figured his ma was right—Steve's health probably _would_ keep him out of getting enlisted…but what if Dugan was right? What if they were so desperate they'd take anybody, even a four-foot-five, eighty-two-pound asthmatic with heart arrythmia? Should he try to talk Steve out of it? He snorted to himself. _That_ would go over well. He didn't want Steve mad at him, especially if they were gonna go off into battle. But…wouldn't it be better if Steve was mad at him but alive? He could get over having his feelings hurt, but he couldn't get over being killed. A sick knot twisted in Bucky's stomach at the thought.

He would talk to Steve in the morning.

* * *

Steve was sitting in Potions, slouched down at his desk so that he couldn't see Bucky over the cauldron between them. He didn't want to talk to him right now. Bucky had spent the entirety of breakfast trying to talk him out of signing up. Steve had gotten angry that Bucky didn't think he could do this, and he'd said some stuff he probably shouldn't have. Bucky had bristled and responded in kind, and they hadn't spoken to one another at all during Charms. They'd had a free period after that, and Steve didn't know where Bucky had gone, but he'd stomped back to the dorm, grabbed his form that Bucky's ma had signed and turned it in to Professor Sparks. They'd continued not speaking during Potions.

"Is there something troubling you, Steven?"

Steve looked up to see Professor Erskine standing in front of him, looking down with an eyebrow raised in curiosity. To Steve's surprise, the rest of the class was empty. Apparently, the bell had gone for lunch without his noticing.

"Oh. No, sorry, I'll get going," he said, gathering his books and papers. Professor Erskine probably wanted to go to lunch.

"Steven," Erskine said. Just his name. Not accusatory, but he wasn't buying it. Steve sighed. Bucky always said he wasn't any good at lying.

"I had a fight with Bucky," he admitted.

Erskine nodded. "I thought it was something like that." Steve looked up at him curiously, and Erskine's mouth lifted in a half-smile. "For an hour and a half, you've been looking everywhere in the room except for the spot two feet to your left where he was sitting." He gave Steve a moment to take that in. "Can I help with anything?" he offered.

Steve considered for a moment. "He doesn't want me to enlist," he said at last. Erskine nodded for him to go on. "I know I'm little," Steve snapped. "And I'm not always very good at magic. Or much of anything else."

"He said that?" Erskine asked curiously.

"Well, no," Steve admitted. "But I knew what he meant. People have been reminding me of that all my life, I don't need him to do it too." Bucky had never really seemed to care what Steve could or couldn't do, or how good he was at magic. That really meant a lot to Steve, but it made it hurt more on the rare occasion that it became an issue. "It's not like I don't know all that. But it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"What doesn't?" Erskine asked.

"I know I can't do much, but I can do _something_," Steve said. "Grindelwald…" He swallowed down an angry knot in his chest. "Grindelwald should never have got this far. We can't keep letting him hurt people, and if I can do something about it, then I'm gonna. It wouldn't be right for me not to."

Erskine nodded, and Steve could tell he was thinking over what he'd said. He always appreciated that about him—that Erskine didn't just give the 'teacher answer' and carry on, but that he actually listened. "Let me ask you something, Steven," he said. "Do you think James honestly thinks that of you—that you are too small and weak to be of any use?"

The angry knot in Steve's stomach wanted to snap back, "Yes!", but he told it to shut up and thought a minute. "No," he said quietly. He knew Bucky didn't think that—hadn't ever thought that.

"Then what do you think brought this about?"

Steve knew the answer to that one. "He doesn't want me to get hurt."

Erskine nodded. "It is not that he thinks so little of you, but that he thinks so much of you. And fear…Our words don't always come out the way we wish they would when we're afraid."

Steve looked down, shame coloring his cheeks. He thought back to Third Year, to Bucky yelling at him in the bathroom. He thought back to the myriad times he'd been in the infirmary and the defeated slump to Bucky's shoulders as Nurse Rains patched him back together. He thought back to the fury on Bucky's face any time he found out that someone was hurting Steve. "Yeah," he said softly.

Erskine rested a hand on his shoulder. "Times are dark right now, Steven. Fear and anger are always close to the surface in times like this. And we cannot chase away the darkness in the world without first chasing it away closer to home." He tapped Steve once on the chest—just above his heart—and smiled.

Steve nodded. He was right. "Thank you, Sir."

Erskine's smile widened. "You're welcome. Now I think you'd better go and have lunch."

Steve nodded again, giving Erskine a smile of thanks as he scooped his things into his bag and headed for the door.

Bucky wasn't at the Hufflepuff table, so Steve inhaled a bowl of stew, checked the dorm, then headed outside to see if he could find him. He found him sitting on a ledge in the courtyard talking to Becky.

"Hi, Steve!" she greeted him with a friendly wave. Bucky eyed him warily.

"Hey, Becky," he replied. "How's your first day going?"

"It's great!" she enthused. "We're learning how to make things float in Charms, and Professor Marsh turned into a swan and back again during Transfiguration, and Jim said after school he's gonna take me and Esther down to the lake and show us the giant squid!"

Steve smiled at her excitement. "That sounds great," he told her. "Hey, um, do you mind if I talk to Bucky for a minute?"

"Sure," she said, sliding off the ledge. "See you later, Jay!"

"Later, Munchkin," he replied with a little smile that vanished after she waved to Steve and left. "So, what, you're seeking me out to yell at me now?"

"I'm not gonna yell at you," Steve said. "I wanted to say I was sorry."

Bucky evidently had not been expecting that. "Oh." Steve guessed he didn't really have a history of cooling down quickly when he was mad at Bucky.

"I know you're just worried that something could happen to me. I shouldn't've have said what I did," Steve said.

Bucky nodded. "It's not…I mean, I know you can put up a fight, Steve. It's just…this is so huge. If something happened to you, I…" He shook his head. "I shouldn't've yelled at you either. I'm sorry too."

Steve hopped up on the ledge next to him. "I know I could get hurt out there," he said. "But if there's something I can do to help, I can't let that stop me."

Bucky smiled humorlessly. "I know. I hate that about you." Steve wasn't sure what to do with that, but Bucky continued. "Don't get me wrong, I admire the hell out of you for it." Steve looked up at him, surprised, and Bucky shrugged. "Jumping into a fight knowing you may not come out in one piece is a hell of a lot braver than going in when you're pretty sure you're gonna win." One corner of his mouth went up in a sad smile. "Doesn't make it any easier, watching them put you back together afterwards."

Steve swallowed down a lump in his throat, unexpectedly touched. Did Bucky really think he was braver than him? "I know it doesn't. And I'm sorry." He knew how much Bucky hated seeing him hurt. "But I've gotta do it."

"I know," Bucky said. He shook his head again. "I don't know why I thought talking you out of it would work."

Steve smiled. "I'll be careful. I promise."

"Well, you'd better, punk," Bucky warned. "Otherwise it won't be Grindelwald you'll have to worry about." And there was a smile in his voice this time. A real one.

"Bucky, you know I…" Steve swallowed. "I don't want to see anything happen to you either." He hoped Bucky didn't think that just because he hadn't tried to talk him out of it, it didn't mean he wasn't just as worried about Bucky as Bucky was about him.

The way Bucky smiled told him he hadn't thought that. "I know. Although, if we're both gonna do this thing, I wouldn't worry too much about me—not with your Shield spell at my back."

Steve smiled and bit his lip and looked down, suddenly trying not to cry and warmed by the fact that Bucky would trust him that much.

Later that evening, Steve realized that his initial excitement over the fact that they had some free periods in their schedule now might have been a bit premature. It certainly didn't look like they'd be using any of that time for relaxing. "The teachers know we don't take O.W.L.'s until the end of the year, right?" he asked, eyeing the stack of books he'd pulled out for his homework.

Bucky scoffed. "You'd think we were taking 'em tomorrow or something. What are you going to start with?"

Steve considered their stack of shared textbooks. "Potions, I guess," he said, pulling the battered green book off the top.

"Great. Give me Defense Against the Dark Arts," Bucky replied.

Steve grunted as he pulled the large gray book from the bottom of the stack and the rest of them fell over. It was early yet—the sun hadn't gone down, but most of the Hufflepuff Fifth-Years were scattered around the common room. Steve supposed that one perk of getting down to work early was that most of the good chairs were free.

"I still don't understand how you're comfortable sitting like that," Bucky said, not lifting his eyes from the page he was reading.

Steve shrugged. He'd given up trying to explain it—laying on the chair with his feet up in the air just felt kind of nice at the end of the day. He thought it might have something to do with his knees—they'd been kind of achy since as far back as he could remember, and it wasn't anything that bothered him much, but sometimes it was nice after a day of tramping around the castle and up and down the stairs to take the pressure off them. As for lying on his stomach while his feet were in the air, well, it was easier to write that way than when he was on his back, and it was a little easier to breathe. Maybe it stretched out his lungs or his chest cavity or something. "I'm just bendy," he said absently, his mind on the medicinal properties of snake venom. "It's an upside of being little."

Bucky snorted but made no reply.

He managed to get through all the Potions reading and questions, a Charms essay and half a Divination one before deciding to call it quits for the night.

They started off the next morning with History of Magic, which Steve thought was a bad idea—it was hard enough to stay awake in that class as it was. There was a very small window in which anyone could reasonably be expected to pay attention in that class, and it was right before lunch. After lunch was even worse than early in the morning.

Transfiguration was interesting. They were working on the transfiguring of live things—the ultimate goal being human transfiguration, though right now they were starting small, turning snails into stones and back again. It was a good thing they were slow. Steve's snail was remaining discouragingly un-rocklike, but at least it couldn't get away from him.

"You're flicking your wrist too much," Bucky told him. Bucky's snail was still a snail too, but it had at least turned gray.

"I don't expect any of you to master this on the first day," Professor Marsh said as she walked up and down between the desks.

"Good," Steve muttered under his breath.

"The transfiguration of living things is far more complex than anything we've done thus far, even simple invertebrates like these," she continued. "Work on your pronunciation, the movement of your wands…It takes practice."

He toned down his wrist movement and tried again. The snail remained annoyingly unchanged. Bucky's was starting to get a grainy pattern to it, but Steve's turned its little head up in his direction and he got the distinct impression it was judging him. "Come on," he told it, prodding it with his wand. "I promise I'll turn you back." No dice.

He'd made no progress by the end of the lesson. Professor Marsh told them all to take one more shot at it before she came around with the box to collect the snails. Steve sighed and muttered the incantation again, then yelped as his snail abruptly disappeared in a tiny ball of fire.

"That's why we don't start with people," Professor Marsh said, more calmly than Steve would have thought, putting out the fire with a small stream of water from her wand. All that remained of the snail was a scorched spot on the desk.

Steve grimaced. "I killed it."

"Yes, well," she said, picking up Bucky's snail. "These things will happen."

Steve sighed as the bell rang and they headed for the hallway.

"It _was_ just a snail, Steve," Bucky said.

"I know. Still, I'll bet it didn't start its day thinking it was gonna catch on fire. Why can't I do this, but I can turn Jacques into a koala without even trying? This should be easier, right?"

"You'd think so," Bucky agreed. "Although, you haven't turned Jacques into anything in, like, two years. But magic's weird."

"_My_ magic's weird," Steve specified.

"All magic is weird," Bucky corrected him. "Who knows why it works the way it does?" He slung an arm over Steve's shoulders. "You'll get the hang of this. You always do."

Steve nodded, only partially convinced. If, by 'getting the hang of it', Bucky meant getting it to work about forty percent of the time, sure, he could probably do that. The other sixty percent was a toss-up between nothing happening and spontaneous combustion. Still, he appreciated the faith Bucky had in him. Steve never gave up trying, but he didn't always have the faith in himself that he acted like he did. But it was a lot easier to find it when Bucky already had it.

* * *

_So, everyone's signed up now-tune in Friday to see who makes the cut. _


	21. 4-F

_Alright, so, let's see how all 'this Army stuff' plays out. _

_(A note on the title, 4-F was the military notation for being rejected for service. We see it being stamped onto Little Steve's paperwork at the beginning of the movie.)  
_

* * *

Aside from the fact that everyone was nervously waiting to see what announcements the weekend would bring, it was a fairly normal first week back at school. The workload had increased—teachers were already talking about O.W.L.'s, even though they wouldn't happen until the end of the year. Bucky knew that wizards had different tests at American schools, but he supposed enough American students went to school somewhere in Europe that it wasn't a weird thing for American magical employers to see an O.W.L. or a N.E.W.T. on a job application. (What _was_ a weird thing was thinking about job applications. That seemed so far away—especially with the war feeling as present as it did.)

There were people in from the Ministry of Magic all week—they were interviewing the students who signed up, which Bucky was initially nervous about, but it had turned out to be a short conversation. They mostly just wanted to know why he wanted to do this. There was a Ministry Healer too, going over everyone's health records, and a couple of Aurors who were going to be handling the training next week. Gabe had wondered why, if they were so short on soldiers, they were sparing some to come and teach a bunch of kids. Monty had pointed out that _someone_ had to do it, and Jim had noticed one of them walking with a noticeable limp. Maybe they'd gotten injured in the fighting, and training underage wizards was a safer way to recover than going back out to the front lines.

The list went up, unannounced, Friday at lunch time. It was posted just outside the Great Hall, slowly drawing a crowd as people began to notice it was there. Bucky found his name in the Hufflepuff column. He was in. He was mostly glad about that. Kind of scared, but, well, who wouldn't be? He found Jacques' name a few below his. Steve's wasn't there. Bucky knew he probably shouldn't be, but he couldn't help feeling relieved. A quick scan of the list told him Jim, Gabe, Monty and Dugan had made the cut too. He didn't see Peggy's name there, which was odd. He was sure she'd said she was going for it.

He wasn't sure where Steve was, and he wondered if he had seen the list yet. Steve was going to be very, _very_ unhappy about it. He turned around to scan the crowd that was moving toward the lunch tables when someone smacked him sharply on the back of the head. "Ow!" he hissed. He turned to see Becky standing in front of him. "What was that for?"

Becky huffed and put her hands on her hips, a position and a glare alarmingly reminiscent of their mother. Bucky almost backed up a couple of steps. "What the hell is this?" she demanded.

"Hey!" he said, and she arched an eyebrow in another one of their ma's dangerous looks, and Bucky did back up this time.

"Do you have a problem with me saying 'hell', Jay?" she asked, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Because _I_," she snapped, slapping him again. "Have a problem with _you_." Another slap. "Signing up for the _freaking. Army_." Two more slaps. "Without telling anyone!" She punched his arm.

"Would you stop that?!" Bucky demanded, backing out of her reach.

"Does Mama know about this?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Of course, she knows."

"Don't you roll your eyes at me, James Buchanan Barnes!" she warned, pointing a finger in his face.

Bucky snorted. "Don't you middle-name me, Rebecca Caroline Barnes. What exactly is your problem?"

"My _problem_?" she repeated, starting to sound a little shrill. "My problem is that my stupid big brother went and did that!" She pointed back at the list of names. "At what point were you going to tell me?"

She swung her hand back to slap him again and Bucky reached up and caught her wrist, holding it away from his face. "I was going to tell you," he started calmly. "When I knew whether I'd be going or not." He would've liked to yell back at her just a little bit (she hit _really_ hard), but knew that wouldn't help anything. He hadn't been planning on defusing _two_ small angry people today. "I didn't want you to worry if there didn't turn out to be a good reason for you to."

Her gaze softened a little bit, though she continued to glare. He sighed. "C'mere." He tugged on the wrist he was holding, and she allowed him to pull her forward into a hug. "I'm sorry, alright?" He felt bad about leaving her out of the loop, but the truth was, between worrying about his ma and worrying about Steve, he hadn't given much thought to how his sister would take this. He felt bad about that too. "I should've told you I was thinking about it."

"Yeah, you should've," she said against his chest.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"Okay," she replied. She hugged him back. "I'm sorry I called you stupid."

He smiled, pulling back to look down at her. "Are you sorry you hit me?" he wondered.

"No."

He laughed. "Fair enough." She smiled. "Are we okay?"

"Yeah," she sighed. She leaned back against him. "I just wish you didn't have to go."

"You know what?" he said. "I do too."

She looked up curiously. "Then why'd you sign up?"

"Well," he told her. "There are people who need help. It's the right thing to do. Doesn't really matter if it's something I _want_ to do."

She considered this. "That's true," she said after a moment. She smiled. "That's really brave of you."

He smiled, heat rising in his cheeks. "Well, it doesn't really feel that way. But thanks."

"You'll be careful, though, right?" she asked, almost hiding the worry in her voice.

"I will," he assured her. "And, hey, when I'm not out doing that stuff, I'll be coming back here. You won't even have to wait for letters from me or anything, 'cause I'll be here and you'll know I'm alright."

That seemed to cheer her up. "That's good." She hugged him again and let go. "I should probably go eat lunch now. Esther's waiting for me."

Bucky looked at her suspiciously. "Were you just waiting here for me to show up so you could hit me?"

"Yep."

He laughed. "Well, you made your point. You didn't see Steve while you were waiting, did you?"

"Uh uh." She shook her head. "Does he know you did this? 'Cause he can hit pretty hard too."

Bucky smiled and shook his head. "Yes, he knows. Hey, how do you know how hard Steve hits?"

"Jim told me he broke a guy's nose once."

"Yeah, he did," Bucky said, thinking back to Third Year.

"I don't know if he could reach your nose," Becky continued. "But I'd watch out anyway."

"I don't think he's going to hit me," Bucky said. "But thanks for the warning."

He scanned the Great Hall, coming up Steve-less, and grabbed a few sandwiches and started walking. He didn't think Steve would be in the dorm—if he'd seen the list already, he'd probably be off on his own somewhere—but checked quickly just to rule it out. He checked the main courtyard outside and a couple of the smaller ones before spotting the outline of a small figure down by the lake.

Steve was sitting on a rock looking out over the water, tossing the occasional pebble into the lake. Bucky made enough noise he knew Steve heard him coming, but he didn't turn around. He climbed up on the rock next to him and sat down. For a few minutes, nobody spoke.

"Saw the list, huh?" Bucky asked at last. He'd wanted Steve to bring it up, but it didn't look like he was going to. Steve nodded. Threw another pebble. "Ham and cheese?" Bucky offered, holding out one of the sandwiches. Steve took it, but still didn't say anything. Bucky sighed. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Are you?" Steve asked quietly, still looking at the lake. "You didn't want me to go anyway."

Bucky considered his response. "You wanted to, though," he said. "So I was gonna have your back."

Steve looked at him then, trying figure out if Bucky felt sorry for him—he hated people feeling sorry for him. Bucky meant it, though, so he hoped he looked sincere. After a minute, Steve seemed to decide he believed him. He nodded a little and looked down again. "Thanks," he whispered.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. "Did they say why?" Bucky asked.

Steve snorted humorlessly. "I went and asked. They had plenty of reasons. And they weren't shy about telling me all of them. They listed all fourteen ways that I am not good enough for this fight, and then they said between the state of my health and how much I suck at magic, all I would do out there was get in the way of people who were actually useful and probably get other people killed."

Bucky's eyes widened in shock. "They said that?"

"They were very blunt," Steve said shortly, his voice hard and tight. He was staring resolutely out at the water.

Bucky shook his head. "Steve, that's awful. I'm so sorry, I…" He trailed off, momentarily lost for words. That was everything Steve worried that other people thought of him, everything that Steve, despite his outer confidence, was afraid might really be true, all dropped on him in one large, painful heap. Anger flared up in Bucky's chest, and though he hadn't lost control of his magic in a very long time, he could feel the pebbles scattered across the boulder where they sat start to vibrate. How dare they?! If Steve wasn't what they were looking for, there were about a thousand other ways they could have said so. What right did they, did _anyone_ have to tell him he was worthless? To dig up his deepest fear and tell him it was right? Bucky shook his head in disgust.

"You know that's not true, right?" Bucky said, trying to rein in the anger in his voice. It wasn't Steve he was mad at.

Steve huffed a humorless laugh and sniffed, looking out over the water. He said nothing.

Bucky grabbed Steve's shoulders and spun him to face him. Steve's eyes were red and hurt and angry and stubbornly refusing to cry. "It's not," Bucky said firmly, shaking his shoulders once for emphasis. This was important. "Steve, you fight harder than anyone I've ever met. You haven't given up once in fifteen years. When you're fighting for what you think is right, man, the only way to stop you is to put you in the hospital. Maybe you're little, and maybe you get sick a lot, but, Steve, you have never, EVER, been useless. Never." He gave him another little shake. Steve's mouth was twisting up and he was blinking furiously, losing the battle with his tears. Bucky swallowed to steady his own voice. "You're the best person I know, Steve," he told him. "You're brave and you're smart and you don't quit, and if those Ministry morons can't see past the four-foot-five asthmatic, then you know what, screw 'em. 'Cause that's the least important thing about you. Don't you believe a word they said, Stevie." His voice wavered. "Not one word."

The anger and hurt had fallen from Steve's face and he was staring up at Bucky in wonder, tears pooling in his sad blue eyes. "You really think that?" he asked in a small voice.

Bucky felt his own eyes start to water. "Stevie, you know I do," he said softly.

A tiny, relieved smile appeared on his friend's face, even as tears fell silently down his cheeks. He didn't seem to know what to say, so Bucky reached over and tugged him over to lean against his shoulder. They sat that way for several minutes, Steve occasionally reaching up to wipe his nose on his sleeve. At last he drew in a deep breath and sighed, sitting up. His eyes were still a little bright as he looked up at Bucky. "Bucky, I…" He shook his head, still not finding the words he wanted. "Thanks."

Bucky nodded.

Steve sighed again. "I just wish…" He wiped the last of the moisture from his eyes. "I just wish there was something I could do," he said. "I hate that I'll just be sitting here, not doing anything, while everyone else is…" He waved out at the lake, the world, the war.

"So, don't just sit here," Bucky said.

"Huh?"

He smiled. Steve never gave up, but sometimes it took him a little while to figure out a practical way to do that. "Well, don't let up on 'em, for one thing. Keep trying. And talk to Erskine. I'll bet there's stuff he does here that you could help with. Not all the fights happen on the front lines, you know."

Steve nodded, wiped his nose again. "You're right," he said, sitting up a little straighter. That determined spark was back in his eye. "I can…Yeah. I can do this." And he sounded like he believed it.

Bucky smiled. Steve's odds of finding a way to help here were more likely than those of the Ministry ever letting him go to war, but if anyone could figure out a way to do it, it would be Steve Rogers. And if Steve ever did make his way into the fight, well, Bucky hadn't been lying when he'd told him he knew he'd have his back.

"So, guess what stupid thing I did?" Bucky said conversationally, propping his arms behind him and leaning back. Steve arched a curious eyebrow. "You know this whole enlistment thing, we talked to Ma about it and everything?" Steve nodded. "Guess who I forgot to tell I was signing up?"

Steve looked thoughtful for a minute before his eyes went wide. "Becky saw the list."

"Yep. She wasn't happy. She hit me."

Steve smiled.

"A lot," Bucky emphasized.

Steve chuckled. "Considering who taught her how to fight, I'll bet she packs a wallop."

Bucky laughed along with him. "Pretty sure there's little hand-shaped bruises all over my arm."

* * *

Margaret Carter was not a happy camper. She was stalking down an empty third floor corridor, barely able to see through the tears burning hot and furious in her eyes. She didn't think she had ever been this angry in her entire life. Rage boiled up in her chest and exploded out into the corridor in a wave of magic, sending three suits of armor crashing to the floor. She tried to swallow it down, bring it back under control, but it burst out again, smashing the armor into the walls and skittering apart in pieces, the clatter of metal barely loud enough to drown out the roaring of her pulse in her ears.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. She whirled around, and there stood Professor Phillips, one eyebrow raised as if waiting for an explanation. "Something bothering you, Miss Carter?"

Casting an eye at the mess around her, Peggy got the feeling she was in a lot of trouble. At the moment, she didn't really care. "Did you know?" she asked, not bothering to keep the accusing tone out of her voice.

"I know a lot of things, Miss Carter, you're going to have to be more specific."

"They didn't take me," she said. "The enlistment people. They didn't want me because I'm a girl and you knew they wouldn't."

Phillips nodded. "I never really thought they would."

Rage flared up in her chest and the armor pieces rattled on the floor and Peggy knew yelling at Phillips was a bad idea, but she found herself unable to care. She had thought, she really had thought, that maybe Phillips had seen her differently after that battle for the right to play Quidditch back during her first year. He'd seemed to take her seriously after that, unlike all the other adults she'd known before. She worked hard in all her classes, striving to prove she could do magic just as well as her male classmates. She played hard on the Quidditch pitch, giving her all and taking hits and carrying on, to try to show them she wasn't weak and fragile. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind, to show them she was just as smart as they were. But it wasn't proper, it wasn't ladylike, and it wasn't enough. Because nothing had changed. He hadn't thought she was good enough then, and he didn't think she was good enough now. What else did she have to do?

"What the hell do I have to do?" she demanded. "Does the fact that I have estrogen inhibit my magic somehow?! Is my intelligence compromised by the lack of a Y chromosome?! I am just as capable as anyone on that list of fighting for what I believe in! What exactly do I have to do to show those idiotic, chauvinistic, narrow-minded, pig-headed morons with their heads so far up the patriarchy that they can't see the light of day that I am more than good enough for you people?!"

Phillips was standing there looking infuriatingly unruffled. "You done?"

Peggy nodded, breathing hard.

"Good. Now that we've got that out of the way, you're right," he told her. "You're a girl. They're not taking you, and they probably never will." He held up a warning finger to ward off another round of yelling. "You're also right that that's stupid."

Peggy stopped short, not expecting that.

Phillips' mouth remained in a hard line, but there was a smile in his eyes. "You think I am unaware, Miss Carter, that you are more than capable? Your talent on the Quidditch field proves you're plenty tough enough to handle the physical part of the fight, but to be honest, given your grades and the quality of your spellwork, I think your abilities would be wasted in combat."

"Sir?" she asked. She had not been expecting the conversation to take this turn, and wasn't really sure where it was going.

"Have you given any thought to military intelligence?"

Peggy shook her head. She hadn't been aware that was an option.

"It requires a sharp mind, a solid backbone, strong magic and the ability to take a hit and keep going. In short, Miss Carter, the sort of thing that seems right up your alley."

Peggy considered this. "The Ministry would let me do that?" she wondered.

"No. The Ministry would not approve at all. But the Ministry is not in charge of the Strategic Scientific Reserve." He did smile this time. It was the first time Peggy had ever seen him do it. "I am."

Peggy found herself smiling back. "I think I would be quite interested in that, Sir."

"Good," he said. "You'll be starting at the bottom of the ladder, so I would suggest keeping any future yelling to yourself," he cautioned, raising an amused eyebrow. "But I think you'll fit in nicely." He waved a hand at the mess of armor in the corridor. "Clean that up, and be in my office Monday after school when the rest of the recruits take off for training."

"Yes, Sir," Peggy nodded. "Thank you, Sir."

He nodded and left and she got to work piecing the suits of armor back together. She was still having a little trouble believing that she wasn't walking away with about a month's worth of detentions. She smiled to herself. Military intelligence sounded interesting, far more interesting than combat. And Phillips thought she was good enough for it. She would show the rest of them.

* * *

_Alright, so everybody's been given a role-next up, they're off to war. _


	22. One War, Many Fronts

_And the children go to war...  
_

* * *

Considering that two of its leaders spent the majority of their time at Hogwarts, the Strategic Scientific Reserve had been granted permission to commandeer one of the large, unused dungeon rooms. Chester Phillips grumbled that they had converted too much of the space into a laboratory, and subsequently spent most of his time in his office. As Abraham Erskine had pointed out, a laboratory was necessary to fulfill the 'Scientific' part of their name. Phillips continued to grumble, but didn't press the matter. Erskine suspected his main objection was that he had to come down several flights of stairs when he wanted to talk to him, but actually quite enjoyed having quiet office space to himself. (Despite the fact that most of their conversations consisted of arguments of some kind or another, the two men were actually quite close friends.)

Erskine was late again—this business of teaching classes _and_ fighting a war was quite time consuming. Thank goodness for Howard Stark. He had been one of Erskine's star students, who had graduated a couple of years ago and had recently happily accepted the invitation to consult with the SSR. It gave him plenty of scope for his imagination and his gift of invention, which, thankfully, resulted in far fewer explosions these days than it did back during his school days. It also allowed him to get paid for it, though, seeing as his family was significantly wealthy of their own accord, that hadn't played too much into his consideration. Howard, not being on Hogwarts staff, was able to keep things running smoothly in the lab when Erskine was attending to educational matters. He refused to deprive his students of the time they needed, but he really did wish there was a way to make sure they were learning without his having to grade anything.

"Afternoon, Professor!" Howard called as Erskine walked into the lab. Being of age now, he was perfectly welcome to call him by his name, but it was a hard habit to break.

"Hello, Howard," Erskine said, approaching the table covered in test tubes and precariously stacked sheets of parchment. Erskine would have preferred Howard keep his work station a little neater, but he always seemed to know exactly where something was when he wanted it. "How is the configuration of the capsule coming?"

Howard pulled a piece of parchment from the middle of a stack. A rough drawing was in the center, surrounded by equations. "I've figured out the conduction problem, Sir," he said, tapping one of the strings of numbers. "But there's just no way we can get around the need for electricity."

Erskine nodded. The enhancement formula he was working on was nearly complete as far as the biological side of things went, but the delivery mechanism was turning out to be more complicated than anyone had anticipated. As he had said before the disaster with Schmidt, it wasn't enough simply to ingest the potion—never mind that it hadn't been finished then. More magic and, yes, non-magical science, was required for it to work the way it was supposed to. "We always thought that would be the case. Colonel Phillips is working on acquiring us a space in London." (Phillips preferred to go by 'Professor' around school. His semi-retirement had come to an end with the war, however, and more people were starting to refer him by his rank again.)

Howard nodded. "We can hook up to the Muggle power grid there. Good. That's far easier than trying to figure out how to get electricity to Hogsmeade." He grinned. "I'd better work on making sure this thing travels well." He returned to his calculations.

A witch in a lab coat hurried over. "Excuse me, Doctor," she said. "One of your students is looking for you."

Erskine nodded and headed for the door. He was not surprised to find Steven Rogers waiting on the other side. "Hello, Steven," he said.

"Hi, Professor," he replied. "Am I interrupting anything? I can come back later."

"It's quite alright. What can I help you with?"

The boy sighed. "I was just wondering, Sir, if you had found anything yet. A way for me to help, I mean."

Erskine couldn't help but smile internally. Ever since the list of those who had been accepted into the Army had gone up last week, Steven had been trying to find a way to offer his services. Erskine had known the boy would have been one of the first to sign up, just as surely as he had known he would never be admitted. Even with nothing else to consider, his health alone would have prohibited that. He'd handled the rejection better than Erskine would have thought, though he did wonder if James hadn't had something to do with that. He knew some of the people on the selection board, and he knew that—depending on how hard Steven had pressed them—they might not have been kind. It was a shame, really, that the heart of such a strong man had been born into a body so weak. The things the boy could accomplish with a spirit like that…

Erskine had found himself wondering from time to time about the next step, once his formula was complete. Steven would be, in so many ways, the perfect candidate. His courage, his spirit, his desire to right all the wrongs of the world—his innate _goodness_—all far more important to the success of the formula than a strong body, no matter what Phillips thought. He never allowed himself to wonder too far, however. Experimenting on children was something the Nazis would do, or Hydra. It wouldn't be right.

Still, the boy's determination was admirable. Erskine had actually thought of a few things in the lab he _could_ do, but they were mostly secretarial, busywork, and Steven would recognize them as such and be insulted. He wanted to be useful. He didn't want pity. Erskine didn't want to pity him either, but…well, determined and admirable Steven Rogers may be, but his magic did tend towards disaster. That couldn't be allowed in the lab. But maybe…

"Actually, Steven, I have thought of something."

"Really?" His face lit up with hope.

"How would you feel about doing some research?"

"Research?" he asked skeptically.

Erskine nodded. Getting the enhancement formula ready was his main concern these days, but it was hardly the only project he was working on. And while wandwork wasn't Steven's strong point, he was rather gifted in the areas of potion-making and Herbology. And there were a lot of potions that needed making and testing, something the boy was more than capable of doing well. He led Steven into the lab, past the large section in the middle devoted to the formula and the capsule, to a desk in one corner. He pulled out a file and handed it to him. "The project Howard and I are working on is taking up more time than I expected, but this is something that shouldn't be neglected," he explained, tapping the folder in Steven's hands. "It's a healing potion. The idea is that it will help counteract not physical damage to the body, but magical. And considering the attacks we're seeing from Grindelwald, this is something we need."

Steven looked at the folder and back up at Erskine. "You want me to invent a potion?"

Erskine smiled. "No. Talented though you are at Potions, inventing something this complex is well beyond the skill of a Fifth-Year. The bulk of it is complete, but it needs refining before it is safe to use. Read the information, research what might be needed, make some experimental potions, run some tests." Steven was still looking at the folder skeptically. Erskine rested a hand on his shoulder, waiting for the boy to look up at him before he continued speaking, deciding bluntness was best. "I am not trying to humor you, Steven. This needs to be done, and I trust you to do it."

He looked a little embarrassed that Erskine had figured out what he was thinking. "Really?"

"Really. I've never lied to you before, have I?"

He blushed a little, but smiled. "No, Sir." His fingers gripped the edges of the folder tighter. "Thank you, Sir. I'll do this. You can count on me."

Erskine smiled warmly. "I know."

* * *

For all the changes the war had brought, things at Hogwarts, at least for the first three weeks of term, felt remarkably normal. Classes continued without interruption—all the training was happening in the afternoon, which was normally when Quidditch practice took place. As all of his friends had played for their various House teams, Steve was used to being on his own in the afternoon. Taking that time to work with Erskine wasn't too great a shift in Steve's schedule. He still went to class in the morning and just did more homework at night now, along with Bucky and Jacques. Bucky talked more about what they did in the training, instead of Quidditch like he used to, but that was about it. So, even though everyone knew it was coming, it came as something of a shock when they got their orders for their first mission.

Bucky had been put in a unit with Gabe and Dugan (along with some other boys) under the command of an Auror named Phineas March. They would be leaving Thursday after lunch for two days on a reconnaissance mission, while other units went off on different missions. Bucky had gone back to the dorm to change during lunch. Steve waited for him in the common room, his mouth dropping open as Bucky came back in his uniform. It was non-descript khaki, very similar to what most of the Allied armies were wearing, with a simple brown robe over the top. His buttons were shiny, his shoes were polished, and the name 'Barnes' was stitched across the top of his breast pocket. He looked suddenly so much older than fifteen.

"Well?" he asked, smoothing down the front of his shirt apprehensively.

"You look like a soldier," Steve said. An actual, legitimate, grown-up soldier. Bucky nodded, looking unconvinced. "You okay?"

Bucky drew in a deep breath. "Maybe. Yes. Yes, I am." He was nervous, Steve could tell. He drew in another deep breath. "I can do this."

"Yeah, you can," Steve said. He swallowed down the urge to complain that he should be going with him. Yeah, the stuff he was doing with Erskine was important, but it just felt so…safe. Like he was hiding from what he _should_ be doing. He didn't say that, though. It wasn't Bucky's fault, and if he said it, Bucky would turn his attention to trying to make him feel better, and Steve wasn't the one who needed that right now.

"You've got this," Steve assured him. "This waiting…waiting's the worst part. Once you get going…" He shrugged. "You'll be great." Bucky looked like he really wanted to believe him, and Steve smiled. "Listen, take it from someone who knows better than anyone: Bucky Barnes on a mission is not someone you wanna mess with. You can totally handle this, no matter what it turns into." They weren't supposed to be going somewhere dangerous, but this was a war. You never knew. He reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. "You're the bravest guy I know, Bucky. You're strong and you're smart, and you know what you're doing." He squeezed his shoulder. "You've got this," he said again.

Bucky swallowed, smiled and nodded. "Thanks, Steve." He drew in another deep breath, his confidence seemingly restored. Bucky always believed in Steve, and he always seemed so confident that Steve sometimes forgot Bucky needed the occasional reminder that people believed in him too. He grinned, bumping Steve with his elbow. "Don't do anything stupid 'til I get back, huh?"

"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you," Steve teased.

Bucky bumped him harder, then grabbed him as he lost his balance and tugged him into a hug. "Punk," he whispered.

"Jerk," Steve replied, hugging him back.

They walked out to the front doors and were joined by Becky as they continued on toward the front gate. Once they left Hogwarts grounds, they would be apparating away to wherever they were going. Several students, either friends or family members, had gathered around to see them off.

Becky flung her arms around her brother, hugging him tightly. Bucky leaned in to whisper something to her, kissing her forehead as he stood back up. "I'll be alright, Munchkin," he told her.

"You'd better," she replied, a little stuffily, like she was trying not to cry.

"Be careful, huh?" Steve told him.

"I will," Bucky promised. He lowered his voice a little. "Keep an eye on Becky for me, will you?"

Steve smiled. "Of course."

Bucky nodded and March called them to attention, and the 107th Unit marched out the gate and down to a clear spot in the road, pausing, spinning on the spot, and disappearing. Bucky shot Steve and Becky a salute before apparating away.

Becky sighed, and Steve put an arm around her. "He'll be back," he told her.

She nodded. "I know." She leaned against Steve and hugged him, sighing again. After a moment she looked up. "Do you know how to apparate?" she asked curiously, straightening back up.

Steve shook his head. "They taught those guys special for being in the Army. You don't normally learn how until you're seventeen." Not that Steve imagined he'd be very good at it. Bucky had described in detail their lessons, offering to teach Steve. He might take him up on it one day, but he was in no hurry. He'd probably wind up splinched, and that didn't sound like fun.

Becky nodded. "I wonder how far you can go with it? If we could apparate, could we go all the way back home, d'you think?"

"I think you could," Steve told her. He recalled Erskine apparating him and Bucky all the way to New York when his ma had been sick. He knew it got harder to do the farther you went, but you could still do it.

"It'd be a lot faster than the train," she mused.

Steve smiled. "It sure would." He looked down at his watch. "I'd better get going. Divination's a long way up from here." It felt weird to still be having classes. They started walking. "What do you have after lunch?"

"Herbology," she said. "It gets really hot in that greenhouse. Matthew Wallace fell asleep last week. He just leaned down on the desk, but no one noticed until he slumped down and fell under the table." She grinned. "He got detention."

"I'll bet he did," Steve agreed. Perkins was not a fan of disturbances. "I'll see you later," he told her, breaking off for the castle. She waved and headed over toward the greenhouses, looking back in the direction of the front gate one more time.

Divination was oddly empty, as was Transfiguration afterwards. As far as Steve knew, most of the boys in his year and up had signed up. He did wonder about the girls—if they hadn't wanted to sign up, or if they hadn't been allowed. He made a mental note to ask Peggy when he saw her. She'd been keeping very busy lately, and he hadn't seen much of her.

The afternoon felt normal for a little while, just him alone in his corner of Erskine's lab. He knew he was supposed to stay away from whatever it was they were doing in the middle. It was nice, he supposed, that Erskine trusted him enough to tell him to keep his distance and know that he would. He made careful notes as he studied the version of the healing potion he'd mixed up yesterday—Erskine's notes had suggested trying moonstone, but it looked like he was going to need something to temper it with. He spent most of the afternoon reading up on moonstone and its reactions to different materials. He wondered what Bucky's unit was doing.

He was struck again by how empty the school was now when he went up to the Great Hall for dinner. There were far too many empty seats. The dorm was quiet too. Of his roommates, only Morris remained—he hadn't gotten permission from his parents to join up. There were no other boys older than Fourth-Year left in the dorm. Steve and Morris liked each other well enough, but didn't usually talk much—they were even quieter tonight when they went to bed, each acutely aware of the absence of three other people breathing in the dark.

They were distracted from the eerie empty feeling of campus the next day by the first air raid of the term. The older students had gotten a little more used to these over the course of the last year, although they would always be scary. Just because they hadn't been hit before didn't mean they never would be. Still, they were much calmer filing into the Great Hall than they were a year ago. Although they were supposed to find the closest empty space and sit down, Steve moved quickly through the Hall until he found Becky. He sat down against the wall with her, looping an arm over her shoulder, and she snuggled against his side. She fit neatly under his arm even though she was taller than him now. Esther appeared from nowhere, as she often seemed to, and latched onto his other side, burying her face in his shoulder.

"It's okay," he whispered. "We're gonna be okay."

Becky looked up and nodded, trying to smile and not look scared. Esther kept her face hidden in his lapel. She was shaking a little and he thought she might be crying. He started humming softly, barely louder than breathing. It was one of the old Gaelic songs his ma used to sing to him when he was sick. He reached the end and started again, noticing that Becky was breathing a littler steadier now. Esther was slowly loosening the death grip she had on his coat, though she kept hiding her face. Engines whined overhead and thuds of something exploding against the protective magical barrier faded and got louder again, but he kept humming, focusing on holding on to the girls.

When they finally gave the all clear, he was surprised at how steady his heart was beating. He was used to being brave because he had to be—because if you started running, they would never let you stop. But this was a different kind of bravery—a kind that felt warm and strong, not just squashing down fear but actually setting it aside because someone else needed you. Steve didn't think anyone had ever needed him like that before.

"Does this kind of thing happen a lot?" Becky asked, climbing carefully to her feet.

"Sometimes," he replied. There really wasn't any way to tell. There had been a few times last year where they seemed to come every week.

"Do they ever hit anything?" Esther whispered. Steve thought that might have been the first time he'd ever heard her say anything.

"No," he said. "At least, not here. You heard them throwing stuff at us?" She nodded. "There's protective charms and barriers covering the school. As long as we keep quiet, their spells can't find us and the bad stuff can't get in."

She nodded again, looking slightly reassured.

This air raid, like most of the ones before, had come at night, and so the students were heading back to their dorms. "Are you gonna be okay?" Steve asked them.

Becky nodded. "Yeah, we'll…we'll be alright." She seemed mostly convinced of that.

Steve smiled. "Okay. You can come find me if you need me. Both of you," he added, making sure Esther knew she was included. Not that Steve knew her at all really, but her brother was gone too.

"Thanks, Steve," Becky said, giving him a quick hug and moving to follow the other Ravenclaws back to their tower.

"Thank you," Esther whispered, smiling shyly as she followed Becky. She looked a lot like Jim when she smiled.

Back in the quiet of the dorm, Steve found some of his fear returning. Were Bucky and the others safe out there? Did they have the same kind of defenses against things like this? Knowing how frightening it was to sit in the Great Hall with its multiple enchantments as enemy planes roared above them, he could only imagine how terrifying it must be to hear the same thing while hiding in the woods, with only trees above you for protection.

But they would be back tomorrow. They would all be back tomorrow, and they would all be fine. They would be.

* * *

Considering the mass of nerves that had been twisting in his stomach before they left, Bucky's first mission was not turning out to be all that exciting. They spent the majority of it sitting in trees and on rooftops under invisibility cloaks outside of a bar that was a known meeting place for Grindelwald's followers. They took note of who came and went and how often, observing schedules for the staff, when they closed and who hung around after and for how long. Every person who entered the bar was photographed and a short description written up. Defenses were noted, protective spells explored. All exactly the sort of thing you would need to launch some sort of operation, but not exactly life or death (well, as long as no one saw them, anyway).

Bucky got that it was important, and he was glad he was able to do something to help—he and all the others took their observations very seriously, making as detailed notes as possible. March had told them Aurors would be conducting a raid in a matter of days, so they knew lives depended on them gathering accurate information.

It was cold, though, and it rained a lot. They were somewhere pretty far north—Bucky didn't know exactly where. They did work in shifts, so Bucky didn't spend the entire two days up on a roof getting rained on, but it wasn't like they could rent out lodging somewhere without being noticed—it was a small town. Their base was a copse of trees outside of town by a rocky overhang. The trees were thick enough, it kept _most_ of the rain out.

On their second night, Bucky had one of the night shifts. There was some kind of after-hours meeting going on, and he was underneath the kitchen window behind the trash cans, covered with a sopping wet, though, thankfully still invisible, cloak. He did think, trying to reposition his leg without making too much noise, that Steve would have fit a hell of a lot better back here than he did. Still, if he had to be hiding somewhere uncomfortable and eavesdropping, he'd gotten a better spot than Gabe, even if it didn't smell that great. Gabe was around the other side of the building under the other window, with nowhere else to hide other than lying flat under a thick, very prickly hedge.

It was too wet to make any sort of accurate notes on parchment, so Bucky and Gabe's instructions had been to do nothing but listen as intently as they could—March was going to extract copies of their memories when they were done so the information could be seen by several people at once via a Pensieve. (Bucky was really glad Gabe had asked what that meant, because it initially sounded terrifying, but March had assured them it was simply a way to copy information—nothing was going to be removed from their heads.) Other members of the unit were keeping watch up and down the street and keeping track of who came and went and when. He just had to listen.

They were discussing plans for some kind of shipment—they hadn't mentioned what yet—and Bucky was straining to hear over the rain, making sure he could hear all the times and locations. It was something important they were trying to get to the continent. The way they talked about how it should be handled gave him the impression that it was a living thing. Maybe a dragon? There were certainly plenty of those up north if you knew where to look, and a dragon could cause considerable damage.

He'd been so cold and wet for the past two days that he had stopped noticing it, but he was suddenly aware of it again—a deep cold, cutting down into his bones and whiting out his other senses. The voices in the room faded away, and even the rain seemed to get quieter. He realized after a split second that the voices had faded because they'd stopped talking. "What is that?" one of them said, and Bucky could hear him moving closer to the window, pushing the shutters open. They could feel it too.

The cold kept getting deeper, and Bucky felt a sudden weight drop into his stomach. He'd felt that before, but not this strongly. He knew what it was before a second man answered. "Dementors."

The guy at the window coughed in the way of a man trying to sound braver than he is. "Getting awfully close, aren't they?"

"Well, get away from the window, then," his companion scoffed. "We're safe in here, Alan's Patronus is keeping them out of the pub." Out of the pub, but not out of the alley—Bucky was holding his breath, trying not to let it escape in a frightened whimper. He was terrified, and he knew the Dementors were causing it, but he couldn't fight them off. Not without giving himself away to the man still at the window.

"They're just drifting closer because the town's gone to sleep," another man said. "We may have put them there, but being the only ones awake will draw them in anyway." He chuckled. "Look at it this way—no one's getting in here." They weren't the only ones awake, though, were they? Most of the 107th was clustered around the bar, and even if the men inside couldn't see them, Bucky got the feeling the Dementors could.

The man above him finally closed the shutters again, and one of the Dementors was close now, Bucky could feel it. He could hear its breath rattling on the wind as it drifted up the alleyway. His frozen fingers fumbled for his wand, but the cold had set too deep into his soul. He could see it now, its wispy, billowing cloak that seemed to move independent of the wind, and it saw him and slowly, almost lazily, changed direction. There was a spell, Bucky knew there was a spell, but he needed a memory, a good memory, and he didn't think he had any. He couldn't remember ever being happy before, and he knew it was the Dementor, he _knew_ there was something he could use, but he couldn't find it…

Something gigantic and silver—the largest dog Bucky had ever seen, bigger even than a graveyard dog—appeared in the alley and stepped in front of Bucky. It planted its giant feet on the cobblestones and snarled at the Dementor. The Dementor paused, hovering in the air, and Bucky suddenly remembered how to breathe again. A head appeared under the awning across the street, seemingly floating in midair. Dugan had flipped back his invisibility cloak, revealing just his face and that stupid bowler hat that he never took off. He raised a finger to his lips, reminding Bucky to keep quiet, and gave him an encouraging nod.

Warmth swelled through Bucky's chest. He wasn't going to die here alone—his friend had his back, and the good memories that had been just out of reach fell back into place, and his Patronus joined Dugan's, a great silver bear standing beside the dog, and the Dementor fled.

While the bear chased the Dementor away, the huge dog remained firmly planted in front of Bucky. It sat down, turning its head to look up and down the street and keeping any more Dementors away. Dugan smiled and nodded before he pulled the cloak back over his face. He had this. Bucky smiled gratefully in Dugan's direction before returning to his listening. He had a job to do, and he could trust the rest of his team to do theirs.

The conversation inside eventually died down and the lights went out. The men inside left one by one, protective silver shapes floating along beside them as they made their way through the dark. (Dugan's dog had vanished abruptly when the door first opened.) They waited in silence for several long minutes before Arthur on a roof across the street lit his wand for a brief moment, letting them know everyone had been accounted for and the coast was clear. Bucky extricated himself from behind the trashcans, limping a little on one leg that had fallen asleep.

He and Dugan loosened their cloaks just enough to see one another, then hid themselves again and fell into step side by side. "Hey, Dugan," Bucky whispered. "Thanks."

He staggered a little as he was nudged by a large, invisible elbow. "Got your back, Boss," Dugan replied softly, a smile in his voice. Bucky grinned. Though this was their first mission, the 107th had been grouped together on their first day of training. For reasons Bucky had yet to figure out, the other boys tended to look to him for direction, and after a few days, Dugan had taken to commenting on it, alternating between calling him 'Boss' and 'Chief'.

The sound of footsteps told them they'd been joined by Gabe and Colin—his lookout—and the four of them made their way quietly to the rendezvous point. They whipped off their cloaks, and Bucky had to swallow the urge to laugh at Gabe, who was muddy and scratched and looked very much the worse for wear after his stay under the hedges. Although, in fairness, he probably smelled better than Bucky did after his stint behind the trashcans.

"Nice work, boys," March told them. "Dugan, Fraser, good work with the Patronuses. Well executed. There weren't any Dementors last night, so this was a surprise, but that was quick acting—nicely done." He reached into a pocket in his cloak and pulled out two small vials. "Let me get those memories, boys, and then the four of you can head back to base and get some well-deserved sleep. Jones, you first." Gabe stepped forward, looking a little nervous, and March reached out his wand and touched it gently to the side of Gabe's head. He pulled it away, and a wispy trail of white followed it, which he directed into one of the vials.

Gabe blinked. "That's it?"

March smiled. "Told you it wouldn't hurt. Barnes." He beckoned for Bucky and repeated the action. It didn't…Well, it didn't feel like anything, really. The conversation he'd heard was just suddenly in the forefront of his mind. March capped the vial with Bucky's memory floating in it—it looked like pearly smoke—and Bucky thought back over the night's events, just to make sure. It seemed to all still be there. Not that he thought March had been lying, but it was nice to know he hadn't lost anything.

March placed a hand on his shoulder. "Just a moment, Barnes," he said quietly as the others moved for the door. Bucky looked up at him. "Are you okay? Dugan made a good call, waiting until that window was closed, but that Dementor got awfully close. You alright?"

Bucky nodded. He wanted to brush it off and say he was fine, but he knew that March, as his commander, needed an accurate assessment of his men at all times. "I'm alright now, Sir. I was a little shook up," he admitted.

March nodded. "You made a good call too, son," he told him, squeezing his shoulder. "Staying quiet like that. I know that wasn't easy. You handled it well."

Bucky smiled. "Thank you, Sir."

March rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a miniature bar of chocolate. "Here. Eat that, go get some sleep, and you should be fine."

"Yes, Sir," Bucky said, taking the chocolate. "Thank you, Sir."

He moved to catch up with the others. They didn't talk much on the way back to base—they still weren't supposed to make too much noise, and they would have had to speak loudly to be heard over the rain. Bucky ate the squares of chocolate as they walked, feeling warmth settle in and chase away the lingering anxiety and nausea left over from the Dementors. The rocky overhang where they'd all been staying wasn't very big, but as everyone else was still out on shift, the four of them fit underneath it alright.

"I can't believe we're going to have to do homework when we get back tomorrow," Colin complained. He pulled out his wand and ran it over his clothes, drying them. The others were doing the same, with various degrees of success. "Bloody Dementors on our first go-round, and there's a ruddy Charms test on Monday."

"I don't care if we do have homework," Dugan said, leaning down and tugging his hat over his eyes. "As long as I get a decent meal first."

"And a shower," Bucky added. His clothes may be drier now, but it was still freezing.

Gabe chuckled. "You could definitely use one."

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," Bucky retorted. "You look like something the cat dragged in."

"I might look like trash, but you smell like it," Gabe responded, and Bucky couldn't help but laugh.

"Is that what that is?" Colin asked conversationally, not opening his eyes. "I thought there was a dead fish in here."

Dugan snorted and Bucky let out a longsuffering sigh. "Shut up," he told them. "I'm going to sleep."

He slept about as well as he could be expected to sleep on damp, rocky ground with Gabe's feet in his face. By dawn, most of the rest of the boys were back, which made it a lot more crowded, even if it was warmer. They ate what remained of their rations for breakfast, and by the time March got back with the last of them, they'd cleaned up and erased footprints and the remains of the fire from the first night, along with any other signs they'd been there. They apparated into a village an hour north of London to meet their Ministry Intelligence contacts. March turned over the vials of memories, and all the boys turned in the notes they'd been taking. Bucky felt a surge of pride as the M.I. commanding officer complimented them on a job well done.

They were directed to a local pub and served lunch out in the back garden. (The proprietor was a witch who knew who they were, but didn't want the state of them to make the customers inside start asking questions. After two days outside in the rain, they were a pretty sorry-looking bunch.) It was a simple meal of bread and stew, but it was the first good meal they'd had since leaving Hogwarts.

They apparated back into Hogsmeade. March headed for the inn where the Aurors had been staying, leaving them to walk back up to school with instructions to make sure their uniforms got cleaned. They would have Monday off from training before starting some more work on Tuesday. On the way back up, they ran into the 49th—Jim's unit—who were looking much cleaner than they were and seemed inclined to be a little smug about it.

As they approached the gates, there seemed to be a lot more people out on the grounds than usual. When Bucky realized they were all out there waiting for the different units to come back, a smile stretched across his face. They weren't too far past the gates before Esther appeared, latching onto Jim with a happy squeal. Becky wasn't far behind her.

"Jay!" she exclaimed happily, although she stopped abruptly just a foot shy of hugging him.

"What?" he said with a smile, holding out his arms. "No welcome back hug for your big brother?"

She scrunched up her nose, very obviously holding her breath, and hugged him tightly. "You smell awful," she said, pulling away.

Bucky laughed. "It's nice to see you too."

She grinned. "I'm glad you're alright."

"Told you I would be."

"Hey, Buck," Steve said, pushing his way through the crowd with a smile. "Welcome back."

"Hey, Steve," Bucky greeted, still smiling. He was glad to see the little punk was still in one piece. Sure, it had only been two days that he'd been gone, but Steve did tend to attract trouble when Bucky wasn't around.

"You okay?" Steve asked, looking him up and down.

Bucky nodded. "It's just dirt. Not a scratch," he assured him.

"Not a good smell either," Becky put in.

Steve laughed, and Bucky reached over and looped an arm around her neck, pulling her closer to him. "No! No! Jay, lemme go!" she complained, pushing at him.

"Oh, come on, Becky, I thought you were glad to see me," he protested.

"To see you, not to smell you," she replied, wriggling out of his grip.

Bucky laughed and Steve grinned. "I wasn't gonna say anything, but since she brought it up…"

"Yes, I know, and I'm going to take a shower," Bucky said.

"A long one," Becky suggested, keeping out of arm's reach as they walked.

"A very long one," Bucky promised.

They walked up to the castle, Becky filling him in on the air raid that had happened last night. She was waxing eloquent about how brave Steve had been, looking after her and Esther, and Steve was blushing, muttering about how he hadn't really done anything. Bucky clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a grateful smile—he hated that he hadn't been here for his sister for that, but he was glad Steve was. Despite his polite protestations, it really was a big deal.

They left Becky by the Great Hall after Bucky promised her that he would write to their ma as soon as he was done showering. "So, you're really okay?" Steve asked him as they walked down the hall to the Hufflepuff dorm.

"I really am," Bucky assured him. "I'm just dirty and sore from sleeping on the ground for two nights. And gross from being stuck behind a pile of garbage for half the night." Steve arched a curious eyebrow. "It was not a glamorous mission, Stevie," he told him with a smile.

Steve grinned. "Am I allowed to ask about it?"

Bucky inclined his head. "I'd tell you about it even if you weren't," he admitted. "But let me get a shower first?"

"I _want_ you to get a shower first," Steve assured him.

Bucky stayed in the shower for a long time, grateful as he never had been before for magical plumbing and an unending supply of hot water. When he was finally done, he went ahead and changed into his pajamas, even though it was only four in the afternoon. It was going to be an early night. Back in the room, Steve was sitting on his bed drinking a cup of hot chocolate. He nodded over to Bucky's bed, where another cup was sitting on the nightstand.

"I asked the house elves for some hot chocolate," Steve told him. "And I went up to the Owlery and sent your ma a letter to let her know you were back and you were okay, but you were really tired, so she shouldn't worry if you don't write until tomorrow," he added.

Bucky smiled, stifling a yawn. "Thanks, Stevie." He sat down on his bed and picked up the cup, wrapping his fingers around the warm ceramic.

Steve smiled back. "I'm glad you're back okay."

"Me too. It got a little scary there for a little while," he admitted. He told Steve about the rain and the cold and the Dementor, but it was hard to feel scared anymore—not here where it was safe and warm and felt like home.

* * *

It was funny—given how scary the concept of these missions were for both the people going on them and the people being left behind—how quickly the whole 'part-time soldier' thing started feeling normal.

After that first time, not everyone went out all at the same time. There was almost always _someone_ gone, but the school didn't feel as empty as it once did. Bucky's unit would be out for a day or two about once a week, maybe two. Steve always worried about him, but he always came back, and maybe that shouldn't take some of the edge off, but it did. They mostly did reconnaissance, and so far the only injury he'd sustained was twisting his ankle when he fell off a roof.

That wasn't to say they never did anything dangerous. Bucky had come back from their second mission and told him about a run-in they'd had with a group of Dark wizards. It was supposed to have been a safe mission, but they'd gone in with faulty intel. Thankfully, they'd caught the Dark wizards by surprise, and there were far more people in the 107th, and it had been over pretty quickly. But for a few minutes, they'd been in actual combat, and Bucky had confessed to Steve that it had been both the most exhilarating and terrifying thing he'd ever done.

They'd had more missions with direct contact with the enemy since then—never intentionally going into combat, but March would take them out to apprehend certain enemy fighters or suspected resistance members, and combat happened sometimes. But they always came back. Often battered and bruised and dirty and exhausted, but they came back. And, maybe it shouldn't be, but it started to feel normal. They'd get back, Bucky would send his ma a letter, shower, and either tell Steve about the mission or just fall into bed. He'd check in with Becky, get notes from Steve and catch up on his homework, and, even though he was the one missing class, he'd help Steve get a handle on the spells they were learning in class. It was a routine. A weird one, but a routine.

It was another day where the 107th was out. Steve had been in Erskine's lab all afternoon, and all things considered, it had been a pretty good day. Peggy had come by—he'd finally found out what had been keeping her so busy, and thought it was great Phillips had taken her on in the SSR. That kind of intelligence work was perfect for her—and they'd gotten the chance to talk for a little while while he was waiting for his potion to boil. He'd missed her. She couldn't tell him an awful lot about what it was she was doing, but it was clear she was loving it, and he was glad.

He'd also had a breakthrough on the potion he was working on. For the past few days, the problem had been that the healing part seemed to be just about set, but it took too long to work through the body. For some reason, Steve's thoughts had kept coming back around to snake venom. The more he read, black mamba in particular jumped out at him. Sure, it had one of the deadliest venoms known to man, which seemed counter-intuitive in a healing potion, but snake venom spread through the bloodstream quickly, and black mamba faster than any other. If there was just a way to use that and cut out the actual deadly neurotoxin part…

Erskine was quiet as he flipped through the notes Steve had written up, although Steve could tell when he got to the part about the mamba venom by the way his eyebrow went up. He didn't say anything, though, and kept reading, breaking out into a proud smile a minute later. He lowered the notebook. "Steven, this is brilliant," he said.

Steve smiled in relief. _He'd_ thought it was pretty brilliant, but he wasn't exactly a master of potions or anything.

"I was dubious at first of your choice to run this trial with the venom, but to counteract the toxicity with the thorn apple already present in the potion was a clever move." His smile widened. "I think this might just work."

"Really?"

Erskine nodded. "I think it's time I sent this on to St. Mungo's so it can move into the medical testing stage."

Steve's mouth dropped open. "You mean I…I did it?"

"You did," Erskine replied, still smiling. "Well done."

Steve beamed. He'd actually done it. He wasn't out in the fight, but he wasn't useless after all. He was helping.

Erskine patted him warmly on the shoulder. "You've done a fantastic job. I knew you would." He smiled. "I'll have another one for you for tomorrow."

"Yes, Sir," Steve said, nodding and smiling. "Thank you, Sir."

"Thank _you_, Steven," he replied.

Steve's high at having accomplished something important successfully was only marginally dimmed by there not being anyone around to tell about it. His evening went on pretty much as normal. He had dinner at the Ravenclaw table with Becky—he liked to check in with her when Bucky wasn't there. Since that first air raid, Esther seemed to have decided that he was one of the upperclassmen who was no longer scary to talk to, and like Jim had said on the train, she sure wasn't shy once she got to know you. She might be even more of a chatterbox than Becky. (Not that Steve wanted anybody to be scared of him, but he did appreciate the fact that Esther thought of him as an upperclassman—most people who didn't know him tended to mistake him for a First-Year, which he hated but couldn't really argue with, considering that he was the same size as most of them and shorter than a good portion of them—including Becky.)

Becky and Esther filled him in on the escapades of the Hogwarts First-Years. Maybe it was because he'd never been particularly popular, but he didn't remember his first year having so much drama. They certainly seemed to be doing alright in the absence of their brothers, though they both did keep asking him if he'd heard anything about them. Steve had to remind them that he'd been here with them the whole time, and knew just as much as they did.

Steve was up later than he meant to be working on homework. He wasn't used to being this pressed for time with his work, but his afternoons were no longer free and coursework was piling up as the year went on. He worked his way through a considerable stack of assignments before falling asleep in a chair in front of the fire—his last conscious thought was that he was falling asleep and he should probably pick his quill up off the parchment so it didn't leave an ink stain on his Herbology essay. He fell asleep before he managed to do that.

He woke up to the sound of the door shutting, and after he realized that he had fallen asleep in the common room, he thought that was weird because he didn't think he'd ever heard the house elves make noise before. He looked over toward the door and his eyes widened in surprise. "Bucky?" He wasn't supposed to be back until tomorrow.

A harried-looking Bucky was standing by the door, looking like he wasn't quite sure where to go. He jumped a little at the sound of Steve's voice, then stared at him with wide eyes for several seconds before crossing the room and pulling him up out of the chair and into a hug.

Despite this somewhat alarming entrance, Steve hugged him back. "Bucky, are you okay?" he asked. Bucky's breath hitched a little and he nodded but didn't let go. Steve could feel little tremors running through his body. "Buck, you're shaking," he said. He pulled out of the hug, but kept his hands on Bucky's arms, turning and directing him to the chair Steve had just vacated. "Here, sit down," he told him. Bucky complied. Steve looked him over carefully. He didn't look hurt—he wasn't even as dirty as he normally was when he came back from a mission—and he didn't…He didn't look scared, that wasn't really the right word, but something had definitely rattled him. "Bucky, what's wrong?"

Bucky shook his head and some of the dazed look left his eyes. "The mission went wrong," he said in a much more normal voice than Steve was expecting.

"What happened?" he asked, his mind racing with possibilities, each more unpleasant than the last.

Bucky shook his head again. "I don't know, I wasn't in that part of it. There were just more of them than there were supposed to be, and they were everywhere. We had to fight our way out and then just cut and run. Everyone made it out. Donovan and Colin got hit pretty bad, but they're gonna be okay," he added. "It was just so loud and confusing. Everyone was yelling and spells were going off, and we didn't know where everyone was. Dugan's hard not to see, but I lost track of Gabe for a while and thought maybe they got him. He's alright, though. They were just…They were just all _there_, all of a sudden. It was just chaos, and it was dark and everyone was running, and…I don't know." The way he was talking about it was like it was just a Quidditch game they'd lost or something—like he was disappointed more than anything else. He sounded normal but his eyes were still haunted.

Steve nodded. "That had to be scary," he said, trying to get him to go on, trying to figure out what had made him look like that.

Bucky shook his head, looking down. "Yeah, but that's not…"

Steve crouched down so he was back in Bucky's eyeline. "What happened, Buck?" he asked gently.

Bucky sighed. "Steve, someone tried to kill me," he said in a small voice. Steve's eyes went wide. "I mean," Bucky continued, huffing a shaky laugh. "It's a, it's a war, I know that's what happens, and they were probably all trying to kill me, really, but, but there was this one guy, and it was just me and him. No one else around. And he pointed his wand at me and he used the killing curse. Like, the actual Avada Kedavra killing curse. And he shot it at me."

Steve's mouth fell open. Yeah, Bucky was right, it was a war, that was how it worked. Phillips had warned them about it. But it never felt really real. Not in all Steve's worries, even though he _did_ worry that Bucky wouldn't come back. "What did you do?" he whispered.

Bucky shook his head, as if surprised whatever he had done had worked. "Shield spell. It was just instinct. He was pointing his wand at me, so I put up a shield before I really even realized what the spell was he was doing. And this green light like something straight out of hell came flying at me, and my shield went up just…" He swallowed hard. "Just in time. It bounced off the shield like six inches from my face and hit a tree, and the whole thing just exploded and I ran." He let out a little disbelieving huff of air, looking around like he couldn't believe he was sitting here in the common room after all that. "Stevie, I almost died tonight."

Steve shot to his feet and threw his arms around him, needing to reassure himself that Bucky was really there just as much as Bucky did. "But you didn't," he said. He wasn't sure which of them needed to hear it more.

He held on to him for a long moment, then pulled away. Bucky was looking down at the carpet, and in the firelight, Steve could see red rising in his cheeks. "Uh uh," Steve chastised. "Stop that." Bucky looked up at him questioningly. "You don't get to be embarrassed for being scared," Steve told him. Bucky was the tough one. The one who took care of other people when _they_ were scared. Bucky wasn't supposed to be afraid. At least, Steve knew that's what Bucky was thinking. Steve smiled encouragingly. "Bucky, you almost _died_. There is literally no more appropriate time to have that emotion."

That surprised a laugh out of Bucky and Steve smiled. Bucky nodded, cheeks still a little red, but smiling. "Thanks, Stevie," he said softly.

"I'm glad you're okay," Steve told him. He was going to focus on that—not the fact that he'd almost lost his best friend tonight.

Bucky nodded. "Me too. Hey, don't…don't tell Becky about this."

Steve nodded. No need for her to know how close it had been. Bucky stifled a yawn. "Hey," Steve said, nudging his shoulder. "Why don't you get cleaned up and get some sleep?" Resting and waking up warm and safe in his own bed would go a long way toward helping Bucky put this behind him.

Bucky looked skeptical.

"At least take a shower," Steve suggested, guessing at what was going through his brain. There was a lot he probably didn't want to revisit once he closed his eyes. "See if the hot water relaxes you."

Bucky agreed and got up, looking a little more like his old self. He took a really long time in the shower. When he came out, Steve was waiting for him in the hall. He held out a cup of tea.

Bucky took it curiously, then smiled as he caught its scent. "Willow's special tea?"

Steve shrugged one shoulder. "You had a hell of a day. A quiet night couldn't hurt."

Bucky smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Steve."

They went into their room, moving carefully through the dark so as not to wake the others. Steve heard the quiet _chink_ of china on wood as Bucky set down his empty cup on the nightstand. Quietly, Steve picked up the cup he'd gotten for himself and downed it quickly before climbing into bed. Visions of Bucky dead on the ground in a forest somewhere had been flying through his brain for the past half hour. He was in no hurry for them to turn into nightmares.

* * *

Military intelligence, as it turned out, was _exactly_ the sort of thing Peggy had been looking for. It was fascinating to see how all these little pieces of things she'd been hearing about over the years fit together. It was terrifying to see the scope and vastness of what Grindelwald and Hydra were trying to do, and it was immensely satisfying to know that this was where the plans and the weapons and the tools were formed that would stop them. And she was a part of it.

Not that her work seemed overly glamourous at first glance. There was lots of catch-up reading to do, lots of time spent familiarizing herself with the filing system, and lots of time running errands. At first, she found the errands in particular to be rather insulting—she'd hadn't signed on to be a glorified messenger girl! She soon discovered, however, that running errands, especially when Ministry officials were involved, was an excellent way to learn things. Very few people paid any attention to the little girl sitting in the corner waiting to deliver a message. And if they were going to underestimate her, well, why not use that to her advantage?

Today, she was waiting to collect some figures from Professor Erskine. Phillips was trying to procure an area in London for him to make a test-run of his new enhancement formula, and he needed more details. The Professor wasn't in at the moment, nor was Steve, so she chatted with Howard Stark.

"Is it really feasible, combining magic and technology like this?" she wondered as he tinkered with a large metal capsule. She knew magic and things like electricity generally tended to be at odds with each other, one keeping the other from working properly.

"Oh, yeah," Howard replied from somewhere inside it. "It's certainly not a popular idea over here in Europe, and it's losing ground back home too, but it's totally doable." He stuck his head out, grinning charmingly. "Just because the bad guys are doing it, it doesn't make it a bad idea. Hand me that flat-head," he added, gesturing at a table of tools. Peggy picked up the screwdriver, and he took it and vanished back inside. "Besides," he continued. "Muggles are really getting this technology ball rolling. It's not gonna slow down. If we don't work on integrating it with magic now, we're hurting ourselves in the long run. We'll just end up more isolated."

Peggy nodded. It made sense. She'd just always been told the two weren't compatible, but according to Howard, that was just people being too lazy to try. "So how does this thing tie in to Professor Erskine's formula, then?" she asked. She's been given the background on the formula, how it was supposed to enhance the user's strength and magical abilities, and she'd been told about how early versions had gone wrong with Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra.

"Potion doesn't work right if you just drink it," Howard said. "Like what happened to Schmidt. I mean, it had some bugs in it then anyway, but even now that it's ready, it doesn't get through the body fast enough, doesn't go deep enough. It'd either wear off after a while like any other potion, or seriously mess you up, like our favorite evil mastermind. So, this little beauty," he said, coming back out and patting the side lovingly. "Is what's gonna make it stick. First of all, the potion's not gonna be drunk—it gets injected intravenously. Gets it in the blood faster. Then, we douse everything with Vita-Rays—a special invention of mine," he added proudly. "Makes everything grow, and it draws the potion into the muscles, the organs, everything, while it's at peak efficiency. The science actually binds the magic to the cells and keeps it alive. So, instead of wearing off like a regular potion, it's continually doing its thing inside each little cell."

"That's incredible," Peggy said.

"Right?" Howard agreed, smirking.

He returned to work and Peggy shook her head. She remembered his charming rogue act from a couple of years ago, though she'd been too young at the time for him to have turned it on her. (Technically, she was still too young for it now, which was why she was getting what she'd dubbed the low-wattage version.) She wondered how many girls actually fell for it.

Professor Erskine returned and she got the information Phillips needed. She returned to his office and her work. She'd been granted a corner to set up her own space. She had a small desk, but most of the space was taken up by a large cork board. Pinned to this were maps, newspaper clippings, photographs, sketches, hand-written notes and a complicated web of colored strings. She sat down on top of the desk, pondering a map in the upper left corner and the assorted information attached to it. Hydra was building something. Something quite large, if the numbers they had on factories were correct. Unfortunately, they only knew where one of those factories was, and no one would be getting into it any time soon to take a look around. Not only was it in a heavily Grindelwald-loyal part of Italy, but Hydra had taken the precaution of keeping it well behind Axis lines as well. There would be Nazis as well as Dark wizards to contend with, which was keeping their secret quite safe.

It had something to do with the Tesseract, though. Of that, she was sure. What the Tesseract was exactly was another matter entirely. It had taken some time after the _Calliope_ was attacked two years ago for the SSR to figure out exactly what it was Hydra had been after. They'd finally learned what the specific books in the box that was taken were, and other snippets of hard-won information and the destruction of the village of Tønsberg confirmed that it was the Tesseract. What exactly that meant, beyond being a formerly-thought-to-be-mythological object, no one knew. Hydra had all the books about it. It was powerful, and Hydra was willing to kill a lot of people for it, which was enough to make it a priority.

She kept at her theorizing, making notes of possibilities to look in to, until Phillips shooed her out to go to dinner. She saw Steve sitting alone in an empty section of the Hufflepuff table and dropped onto the bench across from him.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

"Sure," he said, looking up from his plate with a smile. She smiled to herself as she thought back to Steve in the beginning of their first year and what a hard time he'd had stringing words together when she was around. She was glad he'd got over that—she enjoyed her talks with Steve. He was thoughtful and sweet and clever, and was interested in her as a person instead of as a body or someone to impress.

"How's your secret work going?" he asked her.

"Still secret," she replied, grinning, and he laughed. He never tried getting classified information out of her, but he enjoyed teasing her about it. "But good. What about yours?" she asked, scooping up a spoon of her soup.

"Not nearly as secret as yours," he replied. "And probably not as interesting. But I finally finished that healing potion."

"Really?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Steve, that's great!" She knew he longed to be out there doing something more hands-on, but this healing potion could save a lot of lives.

Steve nodded, grinning. "Yeah. Erskine said it's ready for medical testing. I guess people at St. Mungo's are finding people to test it on or something." He shook his head, like he couldn't believe he'd been a part of the process. "Of course," he added, dunking his bread into his soup. "Erskine's given me a new one to work on, and I think it's even harder."

"I'll bet you ace your Potions O.W.L."

Steve chuckled. "Sometimes I can't believe we're doing all of that. I mean, there's a war on, but you wouldn't know it the way the teachers talk about things."

Peggy laughed. "I know!" she agreed. They complained at length about the levels of homework they'd been set and what seemed like the tunnel-vision of the teachers.

"Is it pretty quiet in your dorm, then?" she asked, looking up and down the empty stretch of table.

"Yeah, there's a lot of people gone over the weekend," he said. "Just me and Morris." She detected a sigh in his voice.

"Things really are different this year, aren't they?" she said, guessing what was on his mind. There was a war on and all, and the stuff they were doing was important, but she was a bit surprised to realize she missed things just being normal.

Steve nodded, and it occurred to her to wonder how lonely he was. She knew he was often content to be on his own, but there was a difference between voluntary solitude and the absence of anyone to break it with. Except for the two of them, the rest of their friend group was out fighting a war. They both had things to keep them busy here, but at the end of the day, Peggy had Kelly and Martha and Louise and Rose to go back to in her room, never mind all the other girls in the dorm. The female half of Gryffindor Tower had remained unchanged with the lowering of the enlistment age. Almost everyone Steve knew was gone.

She sighed dramatically. "I miss Quidditch," she declared, both because it was true and to let him know he wasn't the only one who missed the way things were.

He laughed. "Yeah, I'll bet," he agreed. Even if she hadn't been working with the SSR, she wouldn't have been playing anyway—with so many people gone, games had been suspended for the year. "I miss trying figure out all the ways Jim knew how to cheat at Poker."

Peggy laughed with him. "Figuring out if Bucky and Vicki are on or off," she suggested.

He grinned. "Jacques sneaking off in the middle of the night to steal food."

"Gabe getting poetic about the Falcons."

"Kelly pretending she doesn't know how to do something so Gabe will show her how."

"Ooh, I hate it when she does that!" Peggy insisted, though she laughed along with Steve. "What about Dugan's increasingly elaborate attempts to do something that will get Binns' attention in class? Remember when he hexed Ethan with that dancing curse?"

"No!" Steve exclaimed. "How did I miss that?!"

Peggy thought back. "Oh, wait, I think that was the day you had that asthma attack in Herbology. You were probably in the infirmary."

"Oh. Why did no one tell me about this? What happened?"

Peggy grinned. "It was that one we were working on back in October. Dugan's got pretty good at non-verbal spells, and he shot it across the row at Ethan. His legs started going like mad and he kicked his desk over. Everyone was laughing, and Ronald was trying to pull him up but he kept kicking him."

Steve grinned. "What did Binns say?"

"Nothing! Never noticed. Ronald finally got an arm around Ethan and got him out into the corridor. Binns carried on with the Treaty of Moscow like nothing had happened."

Steve shook his head. "How he misses things like that but still hears the bell…"

Peggy laughed. "I guess being dead will do that to you."

"He was like that when he was alive, too." A bell chimed somewhere overhead, indicating that it was time for Study Hall. Steve stood up. "I'd better go."

"Why?" she wondered. Fourth-Years and under had to be in either the library or the dorms during Study Hall, but upperclassmen were allowed to be out.

"Because even magical plumbing has its limits, and if I wait until after Bucky and Jacques _and_ Dave's units all get back tonight, there's not going to be any hot water left."

"Fair enough," Peggy chuckled. "Enjoy your hot water."

He smiled and waved and left, and she decided to go back to her dorm. Just because she was allowed to be out didn't mean there wasn't a pile of homework awaiting her. Steve was right. There was a war on. It really wasn't fair.

* * *

_So, the war is really on now, but our boys are getting the hang of it. As Peggy said, though, it's November now, and if you remember your dates from the movie, November is when...well, tune in on Friday to see what happens. _

_I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story so far! _


	23. Prisoners Of War

_Alright, back to the story! As the title would suggest, things are not going well for our heroes...  
_

* * *

Since his near-death experience, it had taken more guts than Bucky cared to mention to anybody to get back out there for his next mission. Well, Steve seemed to know, given all the small things he'd been doing during the interval to encourage Bucky, though he never put it in so many words. And Bucky had marched out for his next mission, and things had gone okay. They went fine for the next one too, and he was starting to feel good about it again. Then it all just went to hell.

They had apparated to somewhere in Italy, and the mission was supposed to have been a fairly easy one. They weren't engaging with anyone, just doing some reconnaissance. The bulk of the mission was actually to set up protective charms in an area that had been resisting the Nazis, to give the Allied forces that had made their way there an edge. Just because Hitler didn't have magic, it didn't mean the wizarding world wasn't worried about what would happen if he won.

The Nazis showed up before they were able to finish, and though Bucky had been in combat before, this was different. There were no spells flying through the air, but bullets—heat and the sharp zip of gunfire filled the night. The 107th scrambled to get out of the way—it's not like the Allies knew they were with them—while trying to slow the Nazis up as much as they could. There were a whole hell of a lot of them. The 107th and the Allies were getting pushed back, out of the town and into open country. March was trying to rally them into a defensible position when the sky lit up with a flash of blue light. A sharp crackle snapped through the night and the air sang with magic. It was abruptly quiet.

Cresting the hill was the largest tank any of them had ever seen. The Nazis that had been coming at them were gone. The turret of the tank swung to the right, and what looked like blue-white lightning shot out of it with a loud crack, turning more Nazis to dust.

"That's not one of ours, is it?" Bucky asked. Even though it seemed to be saving them, it felt evil.

March shook his head. "Back to Hogsmeade, boys," he whispered.

But they couldn't apparate. The air was thick with oppressive magic, preventing them from escaping. Bucky's breath caught in his throat. Any of the Dark wizards they could have been fighting had magic, but this thing in front of them…this was new. Hydra.

He and the rest of the unit looked to March for instruction. None of them wanted to die, but now that it seemed inevitable, it wasn't as scary as Bucky would have thought. If he could just take one of them out with him…

Figures were emerging from behind the tank, dressed in black and looking like a swarm of bugs in the darkness. They fanned out, carrying massive guns—there was a faint glow about them that told Bucky they shot the same kind of magical energy as the tanks. With nowhere to run, they stood their ground until one of them approached.

"Surrender your weapons!" he barked through a black mask.

March nodded to the boys, then stepped forward and slowly placed his wand on the ground. A little surprised, Bucky swallowed, nodded, and followed suit. The other boys looked at him, then did the same.

"We're not fighting, Sir?" Dugan whispered.

"I wouldn't get one of you back home if we tried that," he replied quietly. He nodded to the ground. "Put the wand down." Dugan did.

A second masked figure appeared. "Looks like we've got some under-aged wizards awfully far from home," the first one sneered. "Take the wands," he ordered the second one, who scooped them up silently and disappeared back into the dark. "This way," he said, gesturing with the gun for them to move.

They joined the rest of the figures moving through the dark toward the tank. A wizard in a long black leather coat was conjuring ropes out of the air, binding the captured Allied troops. Bucky swallowed, wondering what they intended to do with all of them.

"Captain," the one herding them forward called. He stepped up to the man in the coat and whispered something in his ear.

The captain paused, turning to them with a worrying smile. "I told you this place knew magic. And wizards who feel the need to deny their heritage and fight alongside ordinary men should be able to work alongside them without any trouble. Put them over there," he nodded at the massive wheel of the tank.

They made their way over and sat down, backs against the giant wheel. Their guard kept his gun trained on them as the captain returned to his work.

"I'm so sorry it came to this, boys," March said quietly. "Now, you all know that we can't give them anything." The boys nodded solemnly. Bucky wondered to himself how he would hold up under torture, which was undoubtedly what was coming. He hoped he would do it well.

"That being said," March continued. "Play along as best you can."

"Sir?" Donovan asked.

"The less trouble you give them, the more likely you are to stay alive. The longer you're alive, the better our chances of rescue or escape," he told them. "I swear to you boys, we are not through yet, and I will do everything in my power to get us out of here."

They waited in silence as the captured Allied troops were bound and divided up, some to a series of trucks that had remained on this side of the hill, some left where they were seated. Bucky was trying to figure out the logic in the division, but it was too dark for him to see the people clearly. Most of them seemed to be going to the trucks.

The captain came back over to them and studied them for several long minutes. He was the only one without a mask, and his eyes seemed to bore right into them. Bucky found he couldn't hold his gaze.

"Yes," the captain mused at last. He flicked his wand, and ropes appeared out of the air and bound their wrists tightly. "Yes, you'll all do. Well," he amended. "Most of you." He pulled a small pistol from his belt, and before any of them could react, another crackle of blue light was shooting out of it, and March vanished with a scream of pain.

Bucky stared in horror. He just…

The captain holstered his pistol. "An Auror is more trouble than we want at the moment, but the rest of you will do quite well." He turned to the man with the large gun guarding them. "Have Viktor send another truck over. And kill the wounded. We need to get moving."

The man with the gun waved to one of his counterparts as he moved away, and numerous flashes of light lit the night around them, the crackle of the weapons drowned out by the pained screams of dying soldiers. A flare of red light that Bucky dimly recognized as a stunning spell enveloped him and the others, and then he knew no more.

* * *

It was a gray, gloomy Monday that dawned over Hogwarts. Seven volunteer student units had gone out on various assignments over the weekend, all on different parts of the continent. All had been scheduled to return by Sunday evening. None of them had.

Steve was really trying to cling to the hope that they were just delayed—it had happened once or twice before, though not with everyone all at the same time. It was hard to hold on to that when he looked at the teachers, though. No one was talking about it yet, but faces were grim, and everyone was worried. Professor Phillips was visibly concerned, and it was hard to stay optimistic in the face of that.

"Does anyone know _anything_?" he asked Peggy at lunch. The Great Hall was uncomfortably empty.

She shook her head.

"Peggy, I know you do this classified stuff I'm not supposed to ask about, but—"

"Steve, I honestly don't know," she said. Not that he thought Peggy would lie to him, but her expression was sincere. She was worried too. "That's part of the problem, actually," she added.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I work in Military Intelligence, and there's one hundred and fifty people missing. That's a lot of people. They can't just disappear. It's our job to know things like this, and it's, quite frankly, alarming that no one has any idea what happened. Sorry," she caught herself. "I don't mean to scare you."

Steve shook his head. "That's okay." It was, really. He would much rather have the truth.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both picking at their food. "Actually," Peggy said thoughtfully, as if something was occurring to her. "It might be good that we've not heard anything."

"How's that?" Steve wondered.

"I mean good given the situation," she amended. "It's just that, well, if something really bad happened…One hundred and fifty people, that's, that's a lot of bodies. I mean, they weren't all in the same place, but…" she said uncomfortably.

Steve was following her line of thought, however. "But if they had been killed, there'd be bodies to find, and you would know something. You're saying they're probably still alive."

She nodded. "Yeah. I mean, it's not a guarantee," she said reluctantly.

"But it's something," Steve agreed.

The hope that Bucky and the rest of his friends were still alive was tempered by the fact that if they were alive and they weren't coming back, something had to be keeping them from doing so, and whatever that something was couldn't be good. Steve drifted through the rest of his classes that afternoon, not really paying attention. His teachers didn't seem to have their hearts in it either. (Well, except for Binns. Steve wondered if he was even aware half of the class wasn't there.)

He was having trouble concentrating in Erskine's laboratory after school too. He found himself staring at the page with the instructions for the potion he was supposed to be working on, not actually absorbing any of the words. He didn't notice how far he'd drifted until the potion he had started earlier boiled over, eating a hole in the desk and sending the cauldron crashing to the floor where the rest of it spilled into a toxic puddle that ate away the legs of his stool, landing him in it feet first.

"I'm sorry, Professor," he apologized, once the chaos had died down. The potion had eaten away the bottom of his shoes and burned his feet, and though he'd managed to fling himself to the side, it had continued to creep across the floor, dissolving everything it touched that wasn't stone. Fortunately, Erskine and Howard were able to get it under control. Erskine was now tending to his badly burned feet. "I'm just…I don't know, I can't concentrate today," he said softly, the tightness in his voice only partially caused by how badly his feet hurt.

Erskine, far from getting angry about the mess he'd made, simply nodded. "I know," he said, brushing something cool into the burns on his feet. "I'm worried about them too."

Steve nodded, not sure if it made it better that he wasn't overreacting or worse because Erskine, an Auror, was worried too. "I'm sorry about the potion," he said. "I hope I didn't mess anything up."

Erskine smiled warmly. "Nothing but some of the furniture," he assured him. "That can be replaced. As it is, I think you took the worst of it. You'll be back on your feet by the time I'm done, though I'm afraid the right one may scar a little bit."

Steve shrugged. No one was going to see his feet anyway. Although…"Is there any way to fix my shoes?" There was very little left of them. "I don't have any other ones," he said softly, feeling his cheeks get warm. He was supposed to have two pairs, but he hadn't mentioned it when he'd finally outgrown the ones Mr. Garcia had given him—money was tight, and he had a pair that Bucky had passed down to him, and he only wore one pair at a time anyway. (He'd left that too-small pair in a box under his bed at home. Maybe it was silly, but his ma had gotten him those. He didn't want to throw them away.)

"I don't know that there's much to salvage," Erskine said, casting a sideways glance at them. "But I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Sir," he whispered. He was quiet for several minutes as Erskine continued to work, dabbing potion into the wounds and then passing his wand over them. It was really cold, and he could feel the flesh knitting back together under the wand, and that was a very strange feeling.

"What do you think happened to them?" he asked, not looking up. He knew Erskine knew what he meant.

Erskine sighed, and didn't say anything for a minute. "I don't know," he said at last. "Something on this scale, it has to be serious." He sighed again. "But I do think," he continued. "If they had been killed, we would know. A small comfort, but…"

"It's something," Steve said, echoing his conversation with Peggy. He didn't think Erskine would lie to him either, but he wondered—if it was classified—if he would tell him if he knew.

It took a little longer before Erskine was satisfied with his healing work, but once he was done, the pain was gone. He'd been right, there was a shiny scar running across the arch of Steve's right foot, but Steve couldn't really find it in him to care. His feet were a little tender still, but Erskine assured him they would be fine in the morning. He hadn't been able to fix his shoes.

Steve made his way back to the dorm, the stone floor freezing against his bare feet. He curled up on his bed on top of the blanket, looking at Bucky's bed and the rest of the empty room behind it. He felt sick to his stomach and he closed his eyes. He was really trying not to worry. They were only a day late, after all. Monty's unit had once been three days late coming back, and they'd all been fine. They could still show up. Anytime. And if they didn't, well, they were alive, right? Someone could rescue them. Bucky was tough, he'd survived all those missions before. He could survive this.

A wave of anxious nausea swelled up in his throat, paying no heed to the assurances his head was trying to make. Steve swallowed it down, trying not to think about the fact that last time he'd been this worried, he'd been on his way to the hospital, and his ma had died. He'd had Bucky then. His ma was still gone, and now, so was Bucky.

* * *

.


	24. The Factory At Azzano

_Since the last chapter was a short one, here's another one to tide over the weekend.  
_

_Slight content warning on part of this first section-nothing overly graphic, but there is some brief, abrupt violence and accompanying blood and stuff. _

* * *

Bucky groaned as he dropped down onto the floor of his cage. He didn't think he could have walked any farther anyway. His muscles felt like they were made of jelly. For seven days, they'd been working from sunup to sundown building…whatever the hell it was they were building. He remembered being surprised at first, when he and the rest of his unit had woken up at the factory. They'd been expecting interrogation, maybe some kind of torture, and while, sure, it was nice that wasn't happening, he had a hard time finding how this was better.

They were running them ragged, him and all the other boys from his unit and all the captured Allied prisoners besides. He'd felt a stab of despair when he first arrived at the factory and saw just how many other prisoners there were. This was obviously a massive operation. And not one the Allies or the wizards seemed to be able to do much about, if it was this far along. Even more discouraging was arriving to find Monty and Jacques' units had been captured as well. And they'd only been there a day when Jim and the rest of the 49th showed up too. Everywhere he looked, there were students from Hogwarts—there were a number of other teenagers too, and he guessed they were from some of the other European magical schools. Monty said he'd heard one of the guards mention that they'd been low on workers, so they'd mounted several attacks across the continent with the goal to capture people instead of territory. Whether their prisoners had any magic or not seemed to make little difference.

The bars behind him juddered, letting him know that Dugan had dropped down next to him. Bucky didn't bother to open the eyes he didn't remember shutting. The door slammed shut and he did crack them open then, just to make sure everyone had made it back alive. (The guards didn't seem to care which cage they went into at night as long as they were in one, so people tended to group up with those they knew.) Monty was there, looking asleep already. Gabe was leaning on Dugan who was leaning on Jacques who seemed to be breathing alright despite the weight on top of him. Jim was sitting with his back against the door, holding a plate of bread. He must've been the last one in—if they got fed, the guards handed it off to the last person. The Russian kid was there too. They didn't know much about him, but he seemed to be another teenage wizard—he didn't speak any English, and Jacques' translator charm had been confiscated, so all they'd really been able to get was that his name was Ivan. Bucky guessed the rest of his group must have been killed—he was pretty solemn, and there weren't any other Russians around. There were usually eight prisoners to a cage, though…

"Where's the Dutch kid?" Bucky asked, his voice gravelly in his throat. He hadn't had anything to drink since that morning. He coughed, trying to clear his throat, but it still felt rough. The Dutch kid was twitchy and he rambled a lot—Bucky guessed that he'd seen some crap before he got here—no one understood him anyway, but he'd never spoken coherently enough for them to figure out what his name was.

Jim put some water into the one cup and passed it to him. "Dunno," he said quietly. "He's usually in my section. Haven't seen him since this morning." No one had anything to say to that. It probably wasn't good.

Ivan was watching them—he'd noticed that Bucky always checked on them, and seemed to have decided he was in charge. He nodded at the spot where the Dutch kid usually slept and shook his head. "Mertvyy," he said sadly. "Ya videl." He pointed back at the factory floor then mimed something Bucky guessed meant the Dutch kid had messed up and broken something on the line. He nodded grimly to let Ivan know he got it. Whether the machinery had killed him or he'd been shot for damaging it, he wasn't coming back. Bucky sighed.

He wished he'd known his name.

Jim passed around the bread and they all ate quietly. It wasn't close to enough. They all fell asleep, too tired to talk. Ivan was humming something—it reminded Bucky of a song his ma used to sing, and he turned his face against the bars and away from the others and tried not to cry. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

He woke up in the middle of the night with Gabe's feet in his face. He didn't mind so much this time—if Gabe's feet were there, then that meant Gabe was alive to put them in his face in the first place. He'd never…He wasn't stupid. He knew people died in wars. He'd known _he_ might die, coming and out and doing this. But it was one thing knowing it, and another thing seeing it. March…He shuddered. Their unit commander had been just the beginning.

He could see why Hydra wanted so many prisoners to work—they rate they went through them, they didn't last very long. People were killed for working too slow or for messing up, sometimes just dropping from exhaustion and not getting up again. No one knew where they were dragged off to. On his third day, there had been an English soldier working next to Bucky. His name was Albert, and his sleeve had gotten caught in the machinery. By the time Bucky and the others nearby had gotten everything stopped and got him free, there was nothing left of his arm below his elbow. Bucky had stared in horror, hand over his mouth as he tried not to throw up at the gruesome sight. Albert had been screaming, white as a sheet and on the verge of passing out, supported by two of his squad mates who were insisting he needed help. The guard over their section had said he wasn't worth the trouble, then pulled out a pistol—a regular one, not one that shot lightning—and shot him in the heart. Bucky had yelped in horror at the suddenness and brutality of it and the guard had backhanded him so hard he'd fallen over and told him to get back to work. His cheek was still bruised. He didn't sleep that night and wouldn't have the night after either if exhaustion hadn't driven him to it.

Albert's blood was still spattered across the front of his shirt.

He shivered, curling in on himself and rolling a little more under Gabe's legs to try to stay warm. He could hear Donovan coughing in the next cage over. Someone farther off in the dark was crying. He coughed and pulled his arms under his chest to warm them up. Ever since he'd gotten here, he'd tried not to think too much about Becky and Steve. They had to be worried sick, and it hurt too much to think what this was doing to them. To think that he might not ever see them again. But he couldn't help it. They were home and they were safe and they were all he wanted. He could think about them and let his mind float away from here. It only made it hurt more when he came back. But he couldn't help it.

When he woke up again, it was time for work. No breakfast, but they all drank as much water as they could. Who knew if they would get more before tonight. "Be careful, guys," he told them as they moved towards the floor. "I want you all back in that cage tonight." He wasn't going to lose anyone else if he could help it. March had told them to play along, and maybe playing along just meant staying alive, but if they could do that, then maybe, somehow, they could get out of here.

Dugan grinned. "Yes, sir," he replied, shooting him a salute. That got Bucky to smile, and the other boys smiled and nodded—even Ivan.

Bucky got back to work, casting his eyes up and down the row. Everyone who had been there yesterday was still there today. That was good. They just had to stay alive.

* * *

Abraham Erskine was having trouble concentrating on his work. His eyes kept drifting across the lab to where Steven was sitting. The boy was back at his work station, listing a little to the side and appearing to be in danger of falling off his stool. Thankfully, the cauldron in front of him was empty today. Erskine walked to the other end of the table—from this angle, he could see Steven's face. He was very, very far away indeed.

Erskine sighed. The boy was worried about his friends, about James in particular, he knew. After Steven's mother had passed, the Hogwarts staff had been informed of his new living situation, but Erskine didn't think the boy would be any less worried if his mother were still alive and he had never gone to live with James.

Erskine was worried too. It had been over a week, with no sign of any of the missing students. The Ministry of Magic had assigned Aurors to the disappearance, and he knew Phillips and his intelligence team were working around the clock. If Hydra had them—which seemed likely—he hated to think what was happening to those poor boys. Anger stirred in his chest. This was exactly the sort of thing he'd been afraid would happen, letting those children go off to war. Actually, no, this was so much worse than what he'd been afraid would happen. One hundred and fifty students. One hundred and fifty. He swallowed down the urge to vomit.

He walked over to where Steven was starting to sway in his seat, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Steven?" he asked. The boy blinked several times and his breath hitched as though he was coming awake, even though his eyes had been open.

"Yes, Sir?" he asked distractedly.

"Steven, when was the last time you slept?" he asked gently.

The boy looked thoughtful, and his eyes drifted out of focus briefly before coming back. "I don't know. Friday?"

That was three days ago. "Steven, you cannot go on like this."

"I…" he began in a watery voice. "I can't sleep. I just, I lay there, and…Where are they? Why doesn't anyone know? Why haven't they come back?"

Erskine sighed deeply. He wished he had answers to give him. "I don't know," he said softly. "I'm sorry."

"I just…" the boy continued. Erskine took his arm carefully, guiding him off the stool. He followed, not seeming to notice. "Bucky's all I've got," he said softly. Erskine felt a pang in his heart at those words. The boy had lost so much already. "Isn't anyone looking for him?"

Erskine moved him to sit down on the couch. "People are looking for him, Steven. I promise." He rummaged in the cupboard until he found the sleeping potion he was looking for.

"What if they don't find him?" he asked quietly.

Erskine poured the potion into a cup and sat down beside him. He wished he could promise that someone would find James and the others. "Don't give up yet, Steven," he said instead.

Steven shook his head. "I'm not. I just…"

Erskine nodded. "I know." He held out the cup. "Drink this."

Steven took it and drank it obediently. "He's all I have," he said again, blinking sadly up at Erskine. "After ma died, he…" He listed to the side, and Erskine caught his shoulders, lowering him down carefully to lie on the couch. "He promised," he whispered as his eyes fluttered closed.

Erskine patted the side of his head sadly before he stood up. He wondered what James had promised him.

He pushed himself to his feet with a groan. He may not have been awake as long as Steven had, but he'd had his share of sleepless nights as well. At least now, Steven would sleep, untroubled by dreams or worries. He couldn't let him run himself into the ground. He reached over and plucked a clean lab coat from a nearby hook and draped it over the boy like a blanket. He was so small, even tinier in his fear.

Quietly, Erskine returned to work. If this formula of his was successful, they could finally bring about an end to this war. Maybe then, the children wouldn't have to suffer anymore.

* * *

Bucky jerked in surprise as the whistle blew above him, signaling the end of the work day. On the one hand, he felt like he'd been working forever. On the other, he didn't remember having actually done anything. The fog in his head had kept getting worse since yesterday. Or maybe the day before that. He wasn't sure.

He trudged back toward the cages with the other workers and stumbled, something solid breaking his fall. "Ça va. Je t'ai eu," came Jacques' warm voice. An arm wrapped securely around his shoulders, keeping him upright.

"Thanks," Bucky croaked. His balance had given out on him sometime this afternoon, but he'd been able to lean against the outside of the machine and keep working. He leaned heavily on Jacques now, and not only did it keep him on his feet, but he was nice and warm. Bucky was sure he'd been colder than this before, but he couldn't remember when.

They made it to the cage and Jacques lowered him down to his spot on the floor. "S'everybody here?" he asked, squinting around the cage.

Monty huffed a humorless laugh next to him. "We're all here, Boss." He'd picked up Dugan's habit of calling him that. "I don't think we're who you need to worry about."

Before Bucky could figure out what that meant, Jim was in front of him, hands on his neck and forehead. He sighed unhappily. "The fever still hasn't gone away. You're burning up."

"S'cold," Bucky argued.

"Yeah, I know." There was a flutter of motion, and Dugan's jacket was whipping around, coming to rest on top of him.

"You need that," Bucky said, squinting up in the direction of his friend.

"Not as much as you do," Dugan replied. Gabe sidled up next to him, and Bucky instinctively rolled toward him and the heat he offered.

"Sorry," he whispered.

"Bucky, it's not your fault you're sick," Jim said softly. "What's important is that you hang on, okay? If you can ride this thing out until it breaks, you'll be fine. We need you in here, man, don't you clock out on us."

"Won't," Bucky promised.

Jim smiled and held the cup to Bucky's lips so he could drink. "I'm sorry I can't do anything else," he said. "If I just had my wand, I could do something about this fever."

"Not your fault," Bucky assured him.

Instead of replying, Jim turned to the other guys. "We've gotta get this fever down. If the guards find out how sick he is…"

Bucky was starting to fade out again when he heard a splash and then he gasped as something cold plastered against his forehead. Ivan was kneeling beside him, no longer wearing the bandana around his neck he usually had. It took Bucky a minute to put together that he'd dunked it into the water and that was the cold wet thing on his head.

"Thanks, man," Jim said, smiling at him, and Ivan smiled back and sat down.

"S'cold," Bucky groaned.

"Leave it," Jim ordered. "The coat and Gabe'll keep you warm, and you're putting off enough heat on your own."

Bucky kind of wanted to argue with that, but he fell asleep instead.

* * *

_And on that note, I shall leave you for the weekend. I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story!_


	25. A Flicker Of Hope

_Everyone is still missing, but some pieces are starting to fall into place...  
_

* * *

It had been two weeks without any word on the missing students. Steve was sitting out in the courtyard, watching some of the First-Year boys kick a soccer ball around. Becky was leaning on his shoulder.

"How's Esther doing?" he asked. He knew Becky wasn't doing so well—she looked like she'd been getting just as little sleep as Steve had, and she had gotten really clingy, trailing him around the castle like a shadow. He hadn't seen much of her friend, though. Not since everyone had gone missing.

Becky shook her head. "She's in the infirmary. She hasn't been able to eat anything in a while, and she passed out in class yesterday. She's worried about Jim." She looked up at Steve, tears pooling in her eyes. "Steve, where _are_ they?"

"I don't know," he said. He wrapped his arm around her and she snuggled into his side. He was worried sick, but, just like with the air raids, it was easier to be brave when someone else needed him to. "But the Aurors are looking for them. And they're gonna find them. They will."

She nodded. "I miss him," she said softly.

Steve looked down at his feet. Erskine hadn't been able to fix his shoes, so, reluctantly, he'd taken a pair of Bucky's and stuffed a lot of newspaper down into the toes. He didn't know why he felt so guilty about it. If this had happened when Bucky had been here, Bucky would have offered him the shoes—Steve wouldn't've even had to ask. Well, actually, he probably would have smacked him on the head for not mentioning that he'd outgrown his other pair, _then_ offered him his spare ones. "Me too," he told her.

They sat out there for a while, not really saying much. All of a sudden, Peggy appeared in the courtyard. "Steve!" she called, hurrying over. "There you are. I've been looking for you. Hello, Rebecca."

"Hi, Peggy," Becky said a little shyly.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"I…" She looked at Becky. "Sorry, is it alright if I borrow him for a moment?"

Becky nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna go up and see Esther." She hugged Steve before heading back inside.

"How is she?" Peggy asked.

Steve shook his head. "Not great. But you didn't ask her to leave so you could ask how she was doing." Was this something about Bucky? Had she asked Becky to leave because it was bad news? Or just because it was classified? His stomach twisted itself into several knots all at once.

Peggy smiled humorlessly. "No. I—I'm not really supposed to let you know this, but we found them."

"You found them!" Steve exclaimed.

"Shh!"

"Sorry. Where? Are they okay? What—"

Peggy held up a hand to cut him off. "They're in Italy. They were alive last time anyone saw them."

"Last time anyone saw them? When was that? What's going on?"

"Hydra," Peggy began, and Steve felt the knots in his stomach twist into even more. "Sent out a massive force two weeks ago, right across the continent. It didn't look like they attacked any specific targets or tried to take any territory, but we finally found out they were out to capture people."

"What for?"

"They've got a lot of factories," Peggy said. "One in particular in Italy that we know of, and we were finally able to get confirmation that all the units from here ended up there. They're building something, and they need people to do it. They've got wizards and Allied troops as well, whoever they could get their hands on."

Steve took a few moments to absorb this. Forced labor was, well, it sure wasn't good, but it was better than dead. And if they knew where they were now…"When is the rescue mission?"

Peggy's face fell. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? They're putting one together, aren't they?"

She grimaced. "Maybe above my pay grade, but…I've not heard anything."

"What?" Steve sputtered. "How could they not…But they _have_ to!"

"They did only just find out," Peggy said, not sounding convinced herself.

Steve pushed himself to his feet. "I'm gonna talk to Erskine. He'll know." He set off, Peggy hurrying alongside him. Surely someone was doing _something_. You didn't leave people behind like that. Peggy just…Peggy just hadn't heard anything.

He ran all the way down to Erskine's dungeon lab, almost out of breath as he burst through the door. Phillips was there, having a quiet, intense conversation with Erskine. "You know how to knock, Rogers?" he barked.

"Sorry, Sir," Steve said, panting to catch his breath.

"It's alright. What is it, Steven?" Erskine asked.

He gulped in another lungful of air, trying to steady his breathing. "I heard—I heard you found them! Who's going after them? When are they coming back?"

Phillips glared at Peggy. "You and I are going to have a conversation later that you won't enjoy," he told her. Steve realized belatedly that Peggy shouldn't've told him anything, though she didn't seem sorry. He hoped she didn't get in too much trouble.

Phillips turned his gaze back to Steve. "We don't know when they're coming back."

"Why not? Isn't there a rescue mission?" Steve demanded. An arch of an eyebrow from Phillips told him he should watch his tone.

"No."

"WHAT?!"

"Calm down, Rogers—"

"No!" Steve yelled. "What do you mean there's not a rescue mission?! There's a hundred and fifty people out there, and no one's going to get them?! You can't just—you can't just—" He hadn't quite gotten his breathing back to normal from running yet, and now he was yelling and running out of air and didn't seem to be able to pull any more in. "You—" His breath was hitching in his throat and he started choking on the words that wouldn't come out over the breath he couldn't get in.

"Steven?" Erskine said, kneeling in front of him and looking very concerned.

"Steve, where's your inhaler?" Peggy asked.

Steve patted at the school bag hanging from his shoulder, fumbling clumsily with the clasps. Peggy swatted his hand away, reaching over and undoing it and pulling out his inhaler a second later. He took it in his shaking hands and inhaled deeply, feeling his airway start to open up a little. He pulled it away, trying to draw in deep breaths and allowing Erskine to steer him over to a chair. He sat down and took another pull from the inhaler, and the second one seemed to do the trick—air flowed into his lungs in slow, deep breaths.

"Are you alright?" Peggy asked. He nodded, focusing on his breathing.

Erskine stood up, keeping his hand on Steve's back to monitor his breathing. Steve swallowed hard. Bucky used to do that. "Keep breathing, Steven," he told him. "Professor Phillips will explain."

Steve thought he detected a twinkle of concern in Phillips' eye, though most of what he was seeing was annoyance. "The factory where they're being held is too far behind the enemy lines. Not just Grindelwald's, but the Nazis' too. As things stand right now, there's a hundred and fifty of our boys in there, but we'd lose more than that going after them. We're monitoring the situation in hopes that the lay of the land changes, but right now, there's nothing we can do." He said the last with regret, but that wasn't nearly enough for Steve.

"You're monitoring the situation?" he rasped. "That's it? You're just gonna leave them there?"

"We don't have a lot of options here. I don't expect you to understand the finer points of war—"

"I understand just fine, Sir," Steve spat. He pushed himself to his feet.

"I'm sorry," Phillips said. He looked like he really meant it. That wasn't good enough.

Steve nodded curtly and headed for the door. "Steve," Peggy began.

"I'm fine," he snapped, shaking her hand off. He took a breath. This wasn't her fault. "Sorry," he apologized. "I'm okay. But I need to not be in here."

He stormed out of the dungeon, not really sure where he was going at first, just following his feet until he ended up back in his room. He slammed the door behind him. How could they…He took a breath. It was dangerous. Okay. He supposed he couldn't fault Phillips for that. He trusted him to know what he was talking about, and if he thought they would lose that many men, then, no, they shouldn't send them in. But that didn't mean they shouldn't do _anything_. He felt his pulse quicken, and he pulled in another slow breath. Didn't need another asthma attack. He could think through this calmly.

He sat down on his bed. They couldn't send in the kind of force it would take to storm a factory. They'd have to cross Nazi lines, then deal with whatever kind of magic Hydra had fortified the place with. Obviously, it was powerful magic. It would be just stupid otherwise, and it would have to be enough to keep a lot of people out. He chewed on his bottom lip. A lot of people would raise alarms. A lot of people would put them on the defense. A lot of people would get noticed.

But what about one?

Yeah, he was small and sick, and, okay, he wasn't sure how he would get to Italy, but…Well, it's not like _he_ was going to raise anybody's suspicions, was he? And one person could slip through a lot of places that an army couldn't. Especially a person as small as him.

What about magic, though? He was terrible at magic. So, maybe he could do this without magic. He knew how to pick locks. He knew how to hide, how not to draw attention to himself. He knew how to study a problem, how to break it down into manageable pieces. He may not know anything about the factory right now, but if he could get there, he could figure it out.

Steve caught himself. Was he actually planning an assault on a Hydra base? Him? He wasn't even four and a half feet tall, weighed eighty-two pounds soaking wet, was allergic to a whole hell of a lot of things that he would probably find outside between here and Italy, couldn't run too far without overworking his heart, and couldn't cast a Stunning spell to save his life. What was he gonna do, have an asthma attack at them?

He set his jaw in a determined line. Well, _someone_ had to go. And if no one else was gonna do it, then he would. And if something happened…He'd learned very early in life that if he didn't do something because he could get hurt, then he would never do anything. The fear of pain had never stopped him, not if there was something he should be doing. So, fear of death, well, that wouldn't stop him either. Maybe he wouldn't make it. He probably wouldn't. But one hundred and fifty people needed rescuing. Bucky needed rescuing. So he was gonna try.

He pulled a piece of parchment out of his bag. If he was going to do what Bucky would no doubt call a monumentally stupid thing, he needed to know what he was doing. If he failed, it wouldn't be because he hadn't thought it all the way through. He made a list of everything he thought he would need to do. When he couldn't think of anything else, he grabbed his backpack out of his closet and started putting things in it, allowing his mind to wander and process, and then new things would occur to him and he would write them down too.

The hardest part—right now—would be finding out where in Italy he was supposed to go. He supposed he could get that from Peggy, but he'd have to be careful how he did it. He sure couldn't do it when Phillips was around. Once he knew where he was going, he'd figure out how to get there. Maybe he could get a train in Hogsmeade.

He continued packing and adding things to his list, and when the door opened, he assumed it was Morris. The throat that cleared itself behind him was a lot deeper than his roommate's voice. "Are you alright, Steven?" Erskine asked.

"I'm fine, Sir," Steve replied, a little surprised. "What are you doing here?"

One corner of Erskine's mouth crooked up in a smile. "Just because I am the Head of Ravenclaw, it does not mean that I am confined to that tower. I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I'm okay."

"Are you going somewhere?" Erskine's eyes caught the half-packed bag on his bed.

"Uh…" His eyes went automatically to the list on his bed, trying to figure out if it was in Erskine's line of sight. Erskine picked it up before he could get to it.

"You're planning to go after them yourself?" he asked, raising an eyebrow as he scanned the parchment.

Steve snatched it out of his hand. "Someone should."

Erskine inclined his head in agreement. "You're right, someone should. But why does it have to be you?"

Steve shrugged. "No one else is doing it."

"And you think you're the best man for the job?" If anyone else had said that, it would have sounded cruel, mocking. Erskine was just genuinely trying to follow Steve's thought process.

"No," Steve admitted. "But if I'm the only one who's going to try, then I'll have to do."

"Oh, Steven," Erskine said sadly.

"They don't deserve to be left there," Steve said quietly. "Not while we just wait and see if we're going to win the war. They have been fighting for us, and they deserve to have someone fight for them." He drew in a deep breath. "I know I don't have much of a shot. But I have to take it. And if this kills me, then at least I'll have died doing the right thing."

"I can't let you do this," Erskine said. Steve had figured he'd say that.

"Just try and stop me, Sir," he replied evenly. He knew there was a lot Erskine could do to keep him from going. But if Steve had to fight his way out of here before he fought his way into Nazi Italy, then he'd figure out how and he'd do that too.

Erskine looked at him for a long minute. He seemed to be wrestling with something, and Steve wondered what it was he was looking for. The minute stretched on into several silent more. Steve waited. At last, Erskine sighed. He shook his head, a small smile on his face. He looked…He looked _proud_ of him. That was weird. "Steven, you are a remarkable boy," he said at last. "You…" He bit his lip. "I know that no matter what I say, you will not be persuaded not to go."

"No, Sir," Steve confirmed.

"But can I ask, before you do anything rash, can I ask that you wait?"

"For what?" Steve asked suspiciously.

"I need you to trust me," Erskine said. "I need an hour. Please, don't do anything, don't go anywhere. I have something that…I need an hour. Please."

Steve looked at him curiously. He really had expected him to keep trying to talk him out of this. But…it sounded like he wanted to help. Erskine had always shown more faith in him than any other teacher at Hogwarts, but he hadn't been expecting this much. "Okay."

Erskine smiled. "Thank you. Please stay here. I'll be back."

Steve nodded and Erskine left. He wasn't sure what Erskine had in mind, but he could keep using the time. He picked up a quill and went back to his parchment, refining his plan as he waited for Erskine to come back.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Phillips said. "You want to take the SSR's most important project, the one that years of labor and thousands of galleons have been poured into, the one that could win us this war, and you want to waste it on _Steve Rogers_?"

"It would not be a waste," Erskine protested.

"We're talkin' about the same kid, right?" Phillips replied. "Scrawny little twerp about so high, can't breathe and keeps setting things on fire instead of actually doing magic?"

"Yes, we are talking about the same—"

"Then hell, no. Look, I know you've got a soft spot for the kid, but we've got a great list of potential candidates—"

"We do not have a great list of candidates," Erskine cut him off. "We have a list of physically fit men with some skill at magic. I have been interviewing all of them. None of them are ideal. Steven is the clear choice."

"Steve—" Phillips began.

"No," Erskine interrupted again. "Chester, I need you to listen to me. The physicality of the subject is of no consequence. Schmidt was a strong man. A skilled magician. He has taken the formula, he remains a strong man and a skilled magician. But more than that, Schmidt was a _bad_ man. Yes, he is stronger now, yes, his magic is more powerful, but that bad became _evil_. The serum does so much more than physical enhancement. I need you to understand that in order for this to be successful, the most important thing is that the subject be a _good_ man. We are not going to find a man better than Steven Rogers."

Phillips was quiet for a minute. "The kid does have heart," he admitted, though he still didn't look convinced. "I'll give him that." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Why are you so keen to use him all of a sudden? He's a kid. I would have put that outside your normal code of ethics."

Erskine nodded. Ideally, no, he would never experiment on a child, no matter how certain he was that this was going to work. Even now, even as he knew he had to do this, the thought still nauseated him. But Steven was willing to die, to take on this suicide mission on the nearly non-existent chance that he could save his friends. Though he had always known the boy was brave, this display of courage still amazed him. The boy was determined and the boy was resourceful, and Erskine knew that no matter what they did to contain him, Steven would find a way to get around it and accomplish what he had set his mind to. It might take him some time, but he would do it, and then he would go out and would probably get himself killed.

There was no way to stop him, but, if he had the help the serum would provide, he might actually be successful. Erskine knew the boy was clever. And he had seen the plan he had drawn up in his room. It was remarkably sound—and not unlike the one he knew Chester was composing in the hopes of sending in a smaller team for a rescue mission. Going off that piece of parchment, one would never have known that Steven was an inexperienced child of fifteen. If he had the physical strength, the magical ability the serum would give him, Steven would stand more than a fighting chance. Erskine believed he could actually be able to do it. (Not that he was advocating sending the boy out to storm an enemy base on his own in any case. But the logic in sending a small team was sound—a team Steven would insist upon joining, and, with the serum, he could.)

"I know," he said to Phillips. "But I…" He wasn't sure he could find the words it would take to convince his friend. "You've trusted me this far," he said. "I need you to do it again."

Just as Steven had done half an hour ago, Phillips looked him over thoughtfully, then slowly nodded. "Alright." He sighed. "You'd better know what you're doing."

Erskine nodded. "Thank you. Has Howard gotten everything shipped to London?"

"Almost. The last of it's going on the first train in the morning."

"Good. Steven and I shall be on that train. Contact whatever Ministry officials you need to." He knew the test would have to have an audience, given how much had been spent on it. "We'll do this the day after tomorrow."

"That soon?" Phillips seemed surprised.

Erskine smiled. "It's all ready. We've only been waiting for a subject. Now that we have one, there's no point in delaying."

* * *

_._


	26. And Then There Were Six

_Steve is on route to getting the serum now, but things aren't looking good for our POW boys.  
_

* * *

Last night, Jim had told Bucky if he could hang on until his fever broke, then he would be fine. And though Jim wasn't sure how, his friend had made it through another day. Physically, he shouldn't have—kneeling next to him in the cage, Jim could feel the heat coming off him before he even touched him. He could barely walk, his hands shook, he couldn't see straight and he trailed off halfway through his mumbled sentences. But he had survived another day of work, and Jim could only chalk it up to sheer, stubborn, pig-headedness.

Bucky coughed, and it sounded like it hurt. Jim was a little surprised not to see blood spatter on his hand as he pulled it away from his mouth. Bucky wasn't the only who was sick—not by a long shot. Gabe had been throwing up for a couple of days now, and with as little food as they were already getting, Jim was pretty worried about him too. Ivan wasn't breathing that well, and Jacques and Monty had been coughing for a week. But whatever it was Bucky had, he had it the worst.

Bucky mumbled something that Jim had to lean in to catch, then he chuckled in spite of himself. "Yeah, we're all here, man," he told him. "Don't worry." He couldn't see well enough to count them, but he was still doing what he could to look out for them. He'd always kind of been like that, though. Well, since Jim had known him, anyway, but longer than that if what he heard from Steve was any indication. And when they started this whole Army thing, when he and Gabe would compare notes back in Ravenclaw Tower, Gabe always said how Bucky looked out for the rest of the unit, helping people who struggled with spells, making sure they drank enough water, got enough sleep, keeping their spirits up when they were scared or tired or hurt. Bucky took care of people. It was killing Jim that he couldn't take care of him.

They did get a little bit of bread tonight, and while Jim hated to make people go hungry, he made sure Bucky and Gabe got most of it. Everyone got a little, though, and the other guys firmly insisted they didn't mind—the two of them needed it more. (It was probably just as well that Bucky couldn't really see right now—he might've punched somebody if he found out they were giving him more than they were getting.) They all fell asleep to the nightly chorus that they were starting to get used to of coughing and sniffling and crying echoing in the dark around them. Ivan was softly humming that same song he did every night, and Bucky didn't stir, but he smiled just a little bit when he started it. Jim wondered what it was.

Though Ivan had once again donated his bandana to use as a rag, and though Jim had kept waking up in the night to get it wet again and put it back on Bucky's head, it hadn't been enough to cool him down and break the fever, which was still going strong in the morning.

"Bucky, you gotta get up," Jim said, shaking him. He had to be on his feet by the time the guards came. "Come on."

Bucky groaned, but not in argument—he was trying. He managed to get his hands underneath him and started pushing with trembling arms. He'd made it up about a foot and Jim had just wrapped his hand around his arm to help when something grabbed Jim's other arm and yanked him back. The shift in balance sent Bucky crashing back to the floor with a gasp of pain.

The guard who had grabbed Jim flung him back behind him, sending him stumbling out of the cage to where the rest of them were waiting. Other workers were passing by, not stopping on their way to work, but casting sorrowful glances at the sick boy huddled on the floor.

"You leave him alone!" Gabe yelled as the guard advanced on Bucky.

"Bucky, get up! Come on, you can do it!" Jim shouted as Bucky got his arms underneath him again. He made it to his knees before the guard kicked him in the stomach and he collapsed amid a frenzied roar of cursing and threats and French and Russian obscenities from the rest of them.

"That's enough, Lieutenant," came a nasal, German-accented voice from their left. A little man in round glasses and a lab coat was standing there, watching Bucky with interest. Bucky had grabbed onto the bars this time and was very shakily pulling himself up. The boys watched with bated breath as he finally made it to his feet. He was breathing hard and glaring at the guard, and Jim wondered how well he could see right now. For a moment, he dared to entertain the hope that they would let him go.

"He's not doing very well, is he?" the little man said, as casually as if he was commenting on the weather. Jim had seen him around before. He didn't know his name, but he knew he came around sometimes and took people away. He'd never seen any of them come back. "But he could still be of some use before he dies." He nodded at the guard who'd kicked him. "Take him to the lab. And do try to refrain from damaging him any further." He walked away, and the guard reached forward and grabbed Bucky's arm, yanking him away from the bars. Bucky stumbled, but the guard's grip kept him upright. The rest of them were staring in shock, not sure of what to say, and Bucky swallowed hard and tried to smile at them, then nodded and gave them a salute before they dragged him away.

Another guard smacked Dugan in the back with his rifle, herding them toward the factory floor. They kept glancing back as they walked, even though Bucky was long out of sight. Jim went back to his work station, blinking furiously to clear the tears from his eyes so he could see the tools in front of him.

* * *

_Tune in Friday to catch Steve's transformation! Hopefully he'll be in time..._

_Drop me a note and let me know what you guys are thinking!_


	27. Project: Rebirth

_Alright, here it is! It's finally time for Big Steve! Cue some mad science, a chase scene and a daring plan.  
_

* * *

Steve was bouncing his feet nervously, watching them as they swayed above the floor from where he sat. He was still wearing Bucky's over-large shoes—he'd been trying not to scuff them, thinking that Bucky would still want them to look nice when he came home. He was still incredibly surprised at this turn of events—when Erskine had asked him to wait, he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't an offer to take part in a super-secret experiment that would make him bigger and stronger and better at magic. But here he was, in a waiting room of a secret laboratory under a book store in London, minutes away from something that was about to change his life forever.

He hadn't been sure what to say to Mrs. Barnes about it—she was already worried about Bucky, and Steve finally decided not to say anything at all. He'd gotten permission to sign up for military service, and that's what this was, wasn't it? Better to wait and see what actually happened before giving her something else to worry about. He'd had to tell Becky, though. He couldn't just leave her back at school, all worried and scared on her own. He hadn't told her exactly what it was, but he'd told her he was going to do something with some Aurors and they hoped it would help get her brother and the others back, and though he could tell she was nervous about him going away too, she'd smiled and nodded and hugged him and told him to be careful.

Peggy was there. Evidently, this was part of that secret SSR stuff she'd been doing that she couldn't tell him about. He was glad she hadn't gotten in too much trouble with Phillips, and he was glad she was there. He wanted to do this, but he'd be lying if he said it didn't scare the pants off him.

Howard Stark was there too. Steve was a little surprised to discover that Howard remembered him—he'd only been a Third-Year when Howard graduated. Howard had sat him down and explained more of the science—Erskine had told him what the formula was supposed to do, but Howard told him more about the machine and what he should expect from that. It was good to know what was coming, but he couldn't exactly say it calmed him down.

Erskine pushed through the swinging doors. "How are you doing, Steven?"

"Kinda thirsty," Steve replied. He hadn't been allowed to eat or drink since yesterday morning—no fluids or food twenty-four hours before the procedure.

Erskine smiled. "Well, in about half an hour, you'll be able to drink whatever you like. Are you nervous?"

Steve shrugged. He didn't want to say yes and make him think he couldn't do this.

Erskine nodded and sat down next to him. "It's alright if you are. It's not exactly a normal Thursday."

Steve huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I've got to make up a Transfiguration test when I get back."

Erskine smiled. "Do you have any questions?"

They'd gone over and over this, at Hogwarts and on the train. There was really just one question left. "Well," Steve started. "If this experiment is as big and as important as you say…Why'd you pick me?"

Erskine smiled warmly. "You know, I was wondering if you were ever going to ask. I have actually been thinking for some time now, even before the serum was complete, that I would need someone like you to test it on."

Steve looked up at him curiously. "Why?"

"It had nothing to do with your size," he said. "Though, I imagine the physical change will be far more noticeable with you than it was with Schmidt." He'd told Steve about earlier attempts at the formula, and the effects it had had on Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra. And Steve _had_ been wondering how much that had to do with it—if it made you bigger, he'd make a hell of a 'before' picture.

"No," Erskine continued. "It had to do with your heart."

"My heart?" Steve asked, confused. Was he speaking metaphorically, or did he actually mean the arrhythmic muscle inside his chest?

"Yes," Erskine nodded. "The serum, it adds nothing to you. It amplifies what is already there, and, Steven, you are an extraordinary person. Physically, you are weak and sick and you have never known power. Once it is given to you, you will not lose respect for it, the way a stronger man would. You have been unable to solve problems with your body, and so you refine your intelligence and solve them with your mind. You have the courage of a man who has never known pain, despite that which I know you have suffered. These are all fine, admirable qualities, but more than that…" He reached over and tapped him firmly on the chest, above his heart. "You are kind. You have compassion. You care about other people. Steven Rogers, you are a good man, and I believe that no matter what happens after today, that is what you will remain—not a perfect soldier, but a good man. This is why you were chosen."

Steve swallowed down a lump in his throat. "Thank you, Sir," he said softly. "I…" He sniffed, wiped his nose quickly. "I'll try not to let you down."

Erskine rested a warm hand on his shoulder. "You won't," he said confidently.

The door swung open and Peggy walked in. "They're ready for you," she said.

Erskine patted Steve on the shoulder and stood, nodding for him to follow him as he moved toward the door.

"Are you alright?" Peggy asked, moving into step beside Steve.

He shrugged. "A little nervous," he admitted.

Peggy smiled. "That's understandable. You'll do great."

They walked out into the lab, Steve resolutely not paying attention to the people crowded into the viewing section on side of the room. Erskine had told him there would be Ministry people here to watch. He hadn't sounded happy about it, but he'd just told Steve to pay them no mind.

In the center of the room was a large, metal capsule. It stood alone, connected by wires to a bank of computer terminals arranged in a semi-circle around it. Howard Stark was fiddling with some of the dials, a pair of tinted goggles hanging from his neck.

"Hey, Steve!" he greeted. "You ready for this thing?" He was grinning excitedly.

"Sure," Steve replied, eyeing the capsule as he stopped next to it. It was enormous.

Howard's grin widened. "Don't you worry. We may dim half the lights in London, but this baby's gonna work just fine."

"Steven, if you would remove your shirt and your shoes, please," Erskine said.

Steve unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off, suddenly self-conscious and very aware that Peggy was watching. He handed off the shirt and Bucky's shoes, careful to keep one hand on the waist of the over-large pants he had been given. Erskine assured him he'd be glad of them when it was over.

"Margaret, I think it would be best if you didn't remain on the laboratory floor," Erskine said.

"Oh, right," Peggy said. She leaned over and kissed Steve lightly on the cheek. "Good luck."

Steve stared after her as she walked away, unaware that his mouth was hanging open until Howard chuckled. He blushed, closed his mouth, and climbed awkwardly up into the capsule. He laid down, shifting uncomfortably on the cold material. Erskine arched a questioning eyebrow and Steve gave a half-smile. "It's a little big," he said.

A nurse fastened a restraint buckle across his chest, then dabbed at his arm with rubbing alcohol before sticking a needle into his bicep. Steve winced as it stung. "That wasn't so bad," he said.

Erskine huffed a short laugh. "That was penicillin," he told him. Oh.

Erskine turned and made an introduction to the waiting crowd, explaining what they were about to do. Two nurses screwed small vials of the bright blue potion into slots along the sides of the machine and stepped back, then there was a faint whine of machinery as Howard began powering things up. Two metal plates with several sharp little needles came forward and hovered uncomfortably close over Steve's chest. He found his breathing ramping up and tuned out Erskine's words, focusing on keeping his breathing under control and not having an asthma attack in the middle of the experiment.

All at once, things started to happen. The capsule started tilting upward until Steve was no longer lying flat, but nearly upright. He felt himself slide down a little, catching on the restraint across his chest. Ominous metal pieces that had been hovering just outside of his field of vision and he hadn't been wanting to think about too much swung down with a metallic whine, clamping around his arms and legs and poking at his skin with the little needles sticking out of them, the plates hovering over his chest lowered, and his breath left him in a rush of air as the hundreds of needles stabbed down out of the metal and deep into his muscles. He could feel the potion forcing its way into his body. It was really cold.

The metal pieces swung back and pulled away as the front of the capsule started to close. For a moment, Steve felt a surge of panic as he realized he was now locked inside an airtight metal container, but before he had taken more than a breath, something heavy was being slotted into the outside of the capsule above him, and harsh, sterile (but breathable) air was rushing inside.

There was a tap at the window above him that he imagined was supposed to be at eye-level, though he was just staring at a sleek metal wall. "Steven?" he heard Professor Erskine call. "Can you hear me?"

"It's probably too late to go to the bathroom, huh?" Steve quipped.

He heard a tap as Erskine patted the outside, acknowledging that he had heard him. Then the capsule started to hum, and soon he couldn't hear anything at all as it got louder and louder. He squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding light now pouring into the box with him. It was warm, almost burning, but he didn't have time to pay attention to any of that, because he could feel the potion moving inside him, and it was warm now too, spreading and seeping through his blood and his muscles and making everything tingle. Then itch. Then hurt.

All of a sudden, it hurt _a lot_. His bones were growing, slowly and painfully lengthening and dragging reluctant muscles along with them, and it felt like everything inside was growing faster than his skin, which was stretched agonizingly tight across the expanding muscles and was surely about to rip open from the pressure. Everything kept pulling and stretching and tearing and he couldn't move and he couldn't breathe, but he could scream, and once he started, he couldn't stop.

Vaguely, he heard commotion outside the capsule. People were yelling, and Erskine was up in front of the capsule again, pounding on the window and shouting his name. Steve couldn't quite find the breath to reply, and he heard Erskine yelling at someone to turn it off.

"No!" Steve yelled, drawing a breath into lungs that hurt more than they ever had during an asthma attack. "Don't! I can do this!" He didn't want them to stop. Couldn't let them stop. He could do this. He just had to make it to the end.

There was no response, but the humming got louder and the light got brighter, and everything kept hurting, so he assumed they were still going. There was sudden tightness across his chest and he realized he had grown up against the restraining strap and it was straining against his ribcage, and just as he started to worry it would cut him in half, it burst open and fell aside.

He concentrated on just breathing, pushing the pain to the back of his mind, and then the light was gone and the sudden silence was so loud it was almost deafening. He still couldn't do anything but breathe just yet, even as the pain started to fade and he heard the front of the capsule hiss and click open.

Suddenly there were hands on his chest and arms and he was moving, stumbling forward as he was led down out of the capsule, legs shaking beneath him. He leaned heavily on whoever it was under his shoulders for a moment, catching his breath and finding the pain fading into tremors that were lessening as his strength returned. He opened his eyes and was confused for a moment until he realized he was looking down at Professor Erskine. "W…" he started, still panting. "We did it."

Erskine was beaming. "Yes, I think we did."

"You actually did it," came another voice, and Steve recognized Howard under his other arm.

Gingerly, he pulled his arms off of them, testing his weight and pleased his legs were holding. There was a blur of motion, and Peggy appeared in front of him, and wow, he was looking down at her too, this was weird.

"How do you feel?" she asked anxiously.

He lifted his head, looking around. "Taller," he breathed. That was probably a stupid answer, but he didn't think his brain had caught up with the rest of him just yet.

She reached out a hand like she wanted to touch him, but caught herself and pulled it back. "You look taller," she said.

Erskine and Howard were still hovering, like they were worried he might topple over, but they backed away as his breath steadied and he pulled himself up a little straighter. A nurse beside him handed him a t-shirt, much larger than the shirt he'd come in wearing, and he was surprised at how well it fit. Erskine had been right about the pants—he was glad they were bigger to start with, as they fit a little snugly now, and they were far too short—the hems that had pooled around his ankles were hovering halfway up his calves now.

Nurses and technicians were swirling around him now, brandishing wands and stethoscopes and checking his pulse and he let them, taking the moment to get his bearings. He was, as he'd foolishly blurted to Peggy, significantly taller now. He could look over the heads of nearly everyone in the room—which gave him a clear line of sight to Phillips standing in the back and actually smiling, which Steve found oddly unsettling. He'd never seen that before.

He didn't really have any frame of reference, but he was guessing he'd grown at least a foot. Maybe a foot and a half. He was very aware of his heartbeat, how strong and steady it felt. He drew in a deep breath, looking down and watching his chest (which was huge now!) expand with the air without straining. He stretched his legs out one at a time, no longer feeling the ache that was always there in his knees or the twinge of pain in his right ankle that had been there since he broke it when he was six. The lines in the brickwork on the other side of the room were clearer than they had been, and it took him a moment to realize that what he was feeling behind his eyes was not the dull ache of straining to see something at a distance that he was so used to, but the lack of it. A blood pressure cuff was slipped on his arm as one of the techs instructed him to make a fist, so he did, amazed as he watched the ripple of muscles under his skin and feeling them move in a way he never had before.

He looked up and found Erskine had moved away in the crowd, but was looking back at him and smiling proudly. And for that brief moment, everything was kind of fantastic.

* * *

Without warning, the spectator's area on the other side of the room exploded in a burst of fire and noise. Everyone yelped, ducked down, spun around, trying to figure out what was going on. Everyone except for Erskine, who didn't look surprised, and the man he was looking at—someone in glasses and a gray suit that Steve had seen sitting with the spectators earlier. Before anyone could do or say anything, the man pulled out a gun—an actual, regular gun, which none of the security charms would have thought to check for—and shot Erskine twice in the chest. The man grabbed something off one of the tables and ran as people started screaming.

Steve shoved his way through the crowd and dropped to his knees next to his teacher. Blood was pooling quickly from the holes in his chest, and Steve already knew it was too late, even as he reached out for him to try to help. He didn't understand what was happening, who the man was or why he had shot him, but he couldn't lose him too. Not like this. "No, no, no, no," he whispered, taking Erskine's shoulders, looking for something, for anything he could do.

Erskine looked up at him, eyes tight with pain behind his glasses. He seemed to be struggling to speak, and Steve leaned in closer. Erskine looked him in the eye, reaching up a shaking hand, and tapped him on the chest just like he had done half an hour ago. Then his hand dropped and his eyes rolled back and closed.

"No!" Steve said, taking Erskine's face in his hands, silently pleading with him to open his eyes. He looked up at a bang and a cry, and saw the shooter had reached the top of the stairs. Most of the room was still in chaos—the spectators had been mostly Ministry officials, not military—but something had shot out of Peggy's wand and hit the man in the shoulder, and he staggered, but was still pushing his way to the door. Anger flared to life in Steve's chest and he was on his feet and running before he'd made the conscious decision to do so. He didn't know who the hell this guy was or why he'd shot Erskine, but Steve was sure as hell going to catch him and find out.

He pounded up the stairs after the assailant, catching up with him just as he leapt into a car waiting outside and tore off down the road. Peggy had been running ahead of him, and she shot some sort of spell at the car that sent it wheeling out of control and into another one parked on the side of the road. The assassin got out but the driver didn't, and he grabbed a taxi driver who had stopped to help and flung him out of his cab, jumping in and barreling down the road back in their direction.

Peggy stood her ground, shooting spells at the car, but he must have put up some protective spell of his own, because they merely hit the window and cracked it, instead of stopping him or the car. If she could crack it enough, she could get through, but it didn't look like there was time and Steve ran out into the road and straight into Peggy, knocking her out of the way of the car that wasn't slowing down.

"I had him!" she yelled.

"Sorry!" he apologized, already on his feet and running after the car. What exactly he thought he was going to do, he wasn't sure, but his heart was pumping steadily in his chest and his legs were working, and for the first time in his life, he was really _running_. So he kept going, and tried to go faster, and he did, and the car, to his surprise, was getting closer.

The stolen taxi squealed as it rounded a corner, and Steve had the speed thing down now, but he'd forgotten to account for momentum and balance, losing his footing and tripping and skidding and flying through a window display as he tried to turn.

"Sorry!" he cried again, pushing himself back up and leaving a stunned crowd of shoppers behind him.

Steve sped up, making up for the time he'd lost in his clumsiness. A burst of magic came flying towards him as the driver shot back out the window, and his reflexes sang and pulled him to the side just in time. That was kind of cool.

He put on a burst of speed and leapt into the air, flying farther than he would have thought possible and landing solidly on the roof of the car. The driver veered sharply, trying to throw him off, and Steve clung to the roof by the open windows. Steve rolled to the side as a bullet whizzed through the roof an inch from his side, then quickly rolled back again as another one shot through the space he'd just been in. Unable to steer and fire at the same time, the driver lost control of the vehicle and it spun out of control.

Steve flung himself clear as the car started to roll, rolling himself as one of the doors came loose and bounced in his direction. The driver stood up out of the wreck of the car and aimed his gun at Steve. Instinctively, Steve grabbed the fallen door and swung it up in front of him, hearing two bullets _thunk_ into the metal. The man took off running and Steve threw down the door and ran after him. He was dimly aware of a crowd watching from a distance—it looked like they were down by the river, maybe in some kind of fish market, and shoppers had run fleeing from the gunfire—but not too far, interested in what was happening.

The man made for the river, Steve hot on his heels. As they rounded another corner, they passed a knot of children huddled back against one of the pillars trying to stay out of the way. The man looked back at Steve, grabbed the nearest boy by the arm, and flung him into the water below. Steve rushed to the edge of the pier, even as his target ran.

"Don't worry!" the boy called up from the water. He seemed to have gotten over the shock of being grabbed and hurled through the air and was swimming to a rope hanging off the pier. "I can swim!" he assured Steve. "Go get him!"

Steve spared a moment to make sure he was telling the truth, then shot him a smile and took off. He liked that kid.

He caught up with the assassin in time to see him closing the lid on what looked like some kind of really small submarine. It vanished beneath the surface of the water, and without stopping to think about it, Steve leapt off the side of the pier, diving into the Thames. He knew how to stay afloat, though he'd never been much of a swimmer before, but, just like when he was running, his newly powerful legs drove him through the water at a speed he wouldn't have thought possible. He came up alongside the sub and grabbed the side, and he savored the burst of pleasure he got from the look of complete surprise on the assassin's face, who'd evidently thought he'd gotten away.

Steve punched the window of the sub, and, okay, that hurt, but it actually broke the glass and water flooded into the compartment. The assassin shoved it open and swam upwards, Steve's hand tight on his collar. In a few powerful strokes, Steve reached the ladder on the side of the pier. Holding on to it with one hand, he used the other to fling the other man up and out of the water, hearing him hit the pavement above with an ungraceful thump.

Steve was up the ladder like a shot, and though the man had already pushed himself to his feet in an attempt to run, Steve's hand grabbed his collar and held him in place. He let out an undignified squawk as his motion was stopped abruptly and his air supply was cut off. Something small flew out of his pocket with the momentum, tinkling onto the ground beyond them. Steve flung him to the ground, marveling in the back of his mind that he was actually able to tower over someone now. "Who the hell are you?!" he demanded, grabbing him by the lapels.

"The first of many," the man replied. His tongue moved, and a burst of revulsion shot through Steve's stomach as one of the man's teeth fell out and back into his mouth. Steve heard him crunch down on it, his mouth splitting into a grin as though he'd won. "Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Foam started spilling from the sides of his mouth. "Hail Hydra!" He convulsed once with a strangled gasp and went limp.

Steve realized the man had just killed himself and let go immediately. A crowd was starting to move in, and Steve felt like he should warn them back, but then he recognized Phillips and realized the rest of the wizards had caught up with them. He backed up several paces, breathing heavily and staring at his hands. What had just happened?

* * *

Peggy pushed her way through the crowd of wizards gathered around the dead Hydra agent. She wasn't really supposed to be here, but no one had told her _not_ to come, and she wasn't going to be left behind. A couple of the security wizards from the Ministry were keeping the crowd back, saying things about Nazi agents and having things under control. Phillips and the rest were grouped around the body. One of them was holding a broken vial in his hands—the last vial of the serum he'd stolen from the lab. Her eyes went to Steve, standing off to the side and staring at his shaking hands.

"Steve?" she asked, putting her hands on his arms. He jumped a little bit at the touch, clearly lost in his thoughts. "Are you alright?" she asked. "Why are you wet?"

"He was in the river. I got him out," he said, pointing distractedly at the water behind him. He raised one hand to brush his wet hair out of his face.

Although he was big enough now that she shouldn't have been able to move him, he allowed her to guide him over to a crate to sit down. "Are you alright?" she asked again. He didn't look like he was hurt. On the contrary, other than being wet and smelling like the Thames, he looked better than any other fight she'd seen him come out of. He nodded, pulling in a breath and getting his bearings.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just…"

She nodded. An awful lot had just happened in the span of a few minutes. It was a lot to take in.

"Who was he?" Steve asked.

"Someone they must have thought was with the Ministry," Peggy replied, drawing out her wand and passing it back and forth over his clothes, drying him off. The serum was supposed to keep him from getting sick so easily, but it was London in November and he was soaked. She scowled. Though she had had nothing to do with vetting the visitors, she took the breach personally. Someone along the line had screwed up royally. "He's Hydra, we know that much, but they're working on the rest. Did he have his wand with him in the river?" If they could get the wand, he'd be easier to identify.

Steve shook his head. "No. I never saw him use it after he got out of the car. Maybe he left it there?"

She nodded, making a note to check once she was sure Steve was alright. Physically, he was fine, but there was something in his eyes…"What is it?" she asked.

Steve shook his head. "He…" He gestured over at the dead man. "He had some kind of poison in a fake tooth or something. Bit down on it while I was trying to figure out who he was." He drew in a long breath. "I don't care that he's dead, but he…I was holding on to him when he died. He's the second person to die in my hands today," he finished softly.

She wasn't sure what to say to that, so she hugged him. Enemy agent or not, that had to be hard. And she knew he and Professor Erskine were close. She hadn't realized—she'd been focused on his attacker—she hadn't realized Steve had been holding him as he died. "I'm sorry," she said.

Back in the lab, they were able to put more of the pieces together. Peggy had indeed found the wand, snapped in half inside the taxi. Ollivander had been called in, and by a stroke of luck, he'd been able to identify the wand. They'd all assumed that the assassin had been German, being Hydra, but Ollivander recognized the wand as one he'd sold many years ago to a Fred Clemson, an English student who'd been headed for school at Durmstrang.

"Hmph!" Phillips had snorted. She knew he had a very low opinion of Durmstrang. It did have something of a reputation as far as the Dark Arts went. Grindelwald himself was one of their graduates, as was Johann Schmidt.

Once they knew his name, they'd been able to track a bit of his history, and deduced that he'd been sent to steal the functional version of the formula for Hydra and to kill Erskine so he couldn't make any more. He'd succeeded on the one count. Peggy was exceedingly glad that someone had moved Professor Erskine's body out of the lab before they all got back. Steve didn't need to see that. She didn't think she wanted to either.

Howard had been poring over every inch of the mostly-intact captured submarine, muttering and cursing. Peggy knew it was hardly the time, but she found herself having to bite back a laugh at how personally offended he seemed to be that someone was better at integrating magic and technology than he was.

Steve, for his part, had been sent to clean up, given some clothes that fit, and was now sitting silently in the lab. Healers were looking him over, taking as many notes and measurements as they could, while another was drawing vials of blood. Since the last vial of the serum had been destroyed, Steve's blood was the only hope they had of making more. Howard could only help with the technical side of things—he had no idea what went into the formula itself. And, given the secret nature of the project, Erskine did not appear to have left usable notes. Someone from the SSR was going to check his office at Hogwarts, but they weren't hopeful.

Steve had gotten very pale and was starting to blink lethargically, and Peggy was about to tell the Healer to stop and leave him _some _blood, when he pulled the needle out of his arm. Steve scowled and pulled his arm away. "You have enough?" he snapped.

Peggy moved over to take his arm as he slid down from the table and swayed a little. "Careful," she said.

"Get him something to eat, Miss Carter, then I want the two of you packed up and ready to go," Phillips barked from somewhere across the room. "I've had enough of this circus." She supposed there wasn't really much else they could do here.

She found some tea and things for sandwiches in the lunch room, but Steve refused to eat anything unless she sat down and had some too. "You've had a hell of a day too," he said.

"Yes, but I'm still the same size as I was this morning, and I've still got all my blood," she pointed out.

That got a smile out of him. "True. But that doesn't mean you don't need to eat."

She _was_ hungry. She grabbed a second cup and sat down, pouring herself a cup of tea and grabbing a sandwich off the plate.

"Sorry I knocked you down earlier," Steve said, shooting her an apologetic grimace.

She laughed at the unexpected statement. "It's alright. You _did_ keep me from being hit by the car." She shrugged. "Thanks." She knew she could have gotten Clemson through the window, but Steve was right, she would still have been hit by the car.

He blushed a little and nodded.

They didn't talk much as they ate, and Steve seemed steadier on his feet by the time they got up. They were only supposed to have been down here for the one day anyway, so Peggy didn't have anything but her school bag with some important papers to pack up. She knew Steve had come down the night before. "Do you have anything you need to pack?"

He shook his head. His wand had been stored with his clothes, and he'd gotten that back now. "I just had what I was wearing when I came down." He huffed a small laugh. "Don't think it fits anymore anyway. No, wait! My shoes, I need my shoes."

Someone had brought him a new pair, as the old ones no longer fit. "What for?" she wondered. She'd noticed they'd been big on him, but not big enough to fit now.

Steve's face fell. "They're Bucky's," he said softly. "I need to give them back."

Peggy nodded. No wonder they'd looked so big. "Alright," she said, deciding the story of why he'd been wearing someone else's shoes to start with could wait for another time. "Let's go find them."

They managed to find the shoes and left with Phillips for the train station. Peggy had never really thought about the fact that regular trains ran through Hogsmeade too, but she supposed they must do. They didn't cross the countryside as quickly as did the Hogwarts Express, but they were able to catch an overnight one that would have them there after breakfast. The three of them got a compartment together, though Phillips spent most of his time in another compartment with the other Aurors heading into Hogsmeade. Peggy guessed they were discussing today's developments, and though she was curious to know what they were talking about, she had not been invited, and she was tired. And she didn't want to leave Steve in here all alone.

They talked for a little while about Professor Erskine, not actually mentioning the fact that he was gone, but remembering things he'd said and done. Steve chuckled over the fact that it had initially infuriated Bucky that he kept calling him 'James', but he'd eventually decided to let it be, declaring that Professor Erskine was someone it was just hard to stay mad at. Peggy agreed with that. No one aside from her mother had ever called her 'Margaret' before.

They talked about him for a while, until eventually Steve's drooping eyelids finally closed. Peggy had been wondering how long it would take him—between the adrenaline and the physical and emotional trauma of the day, he had to be exhausted. She reached up and tugged on the string to turn off the light, settling back into her seat and tugging her coat a little more tightly around herself. She should sleep too, but she found herself staring out the window at the countryside rushing by in the dark. Now that all the busyness of the day was over, and there was no one left to talk to, there was nothing left to distract her.

She'd never seen anyone die before. And she'd liked Professor Erskine. She wondered how she would feel about his death if she hadn't. But she had. He'd been kind and patient and always had time for his students. He'd listened to her, and had never given any indication that he'd thought her being a girl would keep her from being good at Potions. He'd treated her just like everyone else, and she'd appreciated that. And he'd treated everyone else well. He'd believed in all of them.

Peggy had felt almost all her life that she had to be tough to prove herself. She hadn't cried in a very long time. But she'd never seen something so awful before either. So senseless. She'd never had someone so good so cruelly taken away. And so tonight, she did cry. She huddled against the window and pulled her coat over her face and she cried for a long time.

* * *

Steve woke up with a crick in his neck. It took him a minute to remember what had happened—he didn't curl up and fit as nicely into train seats as he used to. He rolled his shoulders and stretched, mindful not to wake Peggy, who was asleep in the seat across from him. He smiled when he sat up straight and his feet touched the floor. It was such a little thing, but they'd never done that before.

The sky outside the window was gray in the pre-dawn light. He imagined they still had a way to go until they got back to school. It was hard to believe he'd left only two days ago. So much had changed since then, it felt like years. He pulled out his wand and studied it. He was bigger now, and that was going to take some getting used to, but he was starting to wrap his head around it. But Erskine had said that his magical abilities should improve too.

He decided to start small. Levitation spells were something they'd learned in their first year. He'd gotten things up in the air a few times, but mostly whatever he was trying to levitate just flopped around sadly on the floor. He took off his watch and laid it on the seat beside him. "_Wingardium Leviosa_," he whispered. The watch floated off the seat, following the direction of his wand. He twitched the wand up and the watch jerked upwards. He waved it slowly to the side and the watch drifted lazily to the left. He directed it up to the luggage rack above, and the watch floated up, looped around one of the bars, and came back down. He grinned, extending a hand to catch the floating timepiece. "Wow," he breathed.

He set the watch back on the seat, looking at it curiously. He wondered if he could do non-verbal spells now. Thus far, he'd been failing miserably at those. He thought the spell at the watch, and it leapt gracefully into the air. He caught himself before he laughed out loud, remembering that Peggy was still asleep. "That's so cool," he said, grinning with delight. Even Bucky hadn't picked up non-verbal spells that quickly.

Steve sobered. Bucky was still missing, still stuck in a Hydra work camp somewhere. And Steve was going to get him out. Him and everyone else. He looked down at his newly muscular body and after a moment made a fist, feeling the power that had never been there before. He actually stood a chance now. He could actually bring them home.

With renewed focus, he set to work practicing spells, reviewing in his head all the ones they'd done in class that he'd never been able to make work before and focusing on the ones that would be most useful on a rescue mission. By the time the sun came up, he was feeling confident that he really would be able to do this. Because everything worked. It wasn't, well, it wasn't exactly effortless, but compared to how much work it used to take him to get spells down, it sure felt like it.

He'd been saving the Patronus for last, a little afraid that that one still wouldn't work. He searched for a happy memory, and to the front of his mind came an image of him and Bucky, maybe eight years old, taking turns dancing with Steve's ma in the kitchen as lively music poured from the radio and she taught them how to do the Charleston. He smiled and felt the memory rush down into his wand and explode out into a massive silver eagle as he stared up at it in amazement.

"Is that the first time you've done a Patronus?" Peggy asked.

"What? Uh, yeah," he said quickly, startled and dropping the spell. He looked over at her. "Have you been watching long?"

She inclined her head. "You looked like you were concentrating. I didn't want to interrupt."

He blushed, feeling a little silly. "Did I wake you up?"

"No," she assured him. She nodded at the air where the Patronus had been. "That was really good." Steve smiled and looked down, embarrassed but pleased. "Does it feel different?" she wondered.

"Does what?"

She waved a hand at his wand. "I mean, I know the change in size and everything has got to feel different, but does your magic feel different as well?"

He pondered the question. "I don't know," he said at last. He started levitating her school bag that was sitting on the floor to see if he could tell. "Yeah, kind of," he decided. He gently lowered her bag back to the floor. "I can feel it now, when I'm using it. I don't think I ever really could before." He tilted his head. "Maybe that's why it never worked so well."

She encouraged him to keep practicing—now that he knew she was awake, he tried some of the spells that made more noise. Even though the fate of Bucky and his other friends was weighing heavily on his mind, he couldn't help smiling as they went. He could actually _do_ magic now. It was pretty awesome.

When they pulled into Hogsmeade, Phillips headed into town with the other Aurors, giving them instructions to get back up to school where he would meet them soon. It was weird being at the station just the two of them, with no noise or crowds or creepy semi-invisible-horse-pulled carriages. They set off walking up toward the school, keeping a brisker pace than Steve normally did on this road. He greatly enjoyed both being able to keep up with Peggy and being able to breathe while he did so.

"I suppose we've missed breakfast," Peggy said when they arrived back at the castle. The grounds and entryway were quiet, everyone going about their normal Friday morning classes. She looked at Steve calculatingly. "We should probably try to find something. Dinner was not a lot, and it was quite some time ago, and I'm fairly certain you're supposed to eat more with your new metabolism."

Steve nodded. He felt a pang as he thought of Erskine, but the professor had explained that to him beforehand. And he _was_ feeling kind of light-headed again. "Yeah," he agreed. "Come on," he said, nodding to one of the side corridors. "We can go get some leftover breakfast from the kitchen."

"You know where the kitchen is?"

"Since Second Year," he said with a grin.

Her mouth dropped open as she shot him a scandalized look. "I think you'd better show me."

He smiled and extended an arm, and she took it and walked with him down the corridor. The kitchen was abuzz with after-breakfast cleanup. Elves scuttled to and fro and dishes clanked and clattered in the great sinks along the far wall. As usually happened, all heads swung towards the door when they stepped in, jerked down in a little bow, and then returned to work, leaving the job of tending to the guests to those nearest them. A female elf scurried forward, bowing as she did so. "Welcome, welcome, Sir and Miss. How can I be helping you?"

"Hi, Willow," Steve said, recognizing the elf. She looked up in surprise that he had used her name, and Steve realized she hadn't recognized him. "It's me, Steve," he added with a smile.

Willow's already large eyes widened comically. "Master Steve?" She looked up, finally seeing his face, and gasped. "Sir is growing so big so quickly!"

Steve huffed a short laugh. "Yeah, it's…It's a long story. Oh!" he caught himself, remembering his manners. "This is my friend, Peggy. Peggy, this is Willow."

"It's lovely to meet you, Willow," Peggy said.

"And you, Mistress Peggy, and you," Willow enthused. "How can Willow be of service?"

"We kind of missed breakfast," Steve said. "We were hoping…"

Willow cut him off before he could go any further. "Of course, sir, of course! Willow will fix this!" And she bowed again and shot off into the crowd of elves.

"Come down here a lot, do you?" Peggy asked.

Steve shrugged. "They do make pretty good snacks."

Willow, surprised though she may have been by Steve's change in size, seemed to take it in stride that Steve would need to eat more now, and she returned with more food than she would otherwise have brought and more than Steve thought he could eat. Another elf was under the tray, helping her carry it, and when they slid it off onto the table, Steve recognized Winston. He introduced him to Peggy, and Winston seemed delighted to meet a friend of Steve's.

"Is that a new towel?" Steve asked, noticing that the tea towel Winston usually wore like a toga had a larger seal on the bottom, in a brighter gold.

Winston beamed, seemingly pleased that Steve had noticed. "That it is, Master Steve," he said, smoothing out the edge of the towel. "Winston has been promoted. Winston is now overseeing all elves what cleans student dorms."

"Hey, that's great!" he said. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you, Sir," Winston said, bowing low. "Winston must return to work now, but if Sir and Miss is needing anything, you must just let me know."

The elf rushed off, and out of the corner of his eye Steve saw Peggy looking at him with a soft smile, though she turned away when he turned to face her.

They ate quickly, unsure of when Phillips would be back. Steve was surprised at just how much it took him to feel full, though there was still plenty left when they were done.

They left the kitchen in time for the mid-morning break, and they decided to wait in the entry hall for Phillips. Students wandered around, some going outside to brave the chilly November air. Steve spotted Becky coming down the stairs, and she rushed over, though he noticed she was looking at Peggy.

"Peggy!" she called, hurrying over. "You're back! Is—" She stopped short as her eyes landed on Steve. "_Steve_?" she gaped.

He smiled. "Hey, Becky."

She studied him speechlessly, eyes almost as wide as Willow's. "Holy _cow_!" she said at last, mouth hanging open, and in that moment she looked and sounded so much like her brother, Steve wasn't sure if he should laugh or cry.

"You like it?" he asked, holding out his arms like he was showing off a new coat.

Becky scowled. "You're taller than me now." He heard Peggy choke down a laugh beside him.

"You know, I was taller than you until you were ten," he reminded her. "And I'm fifteen, I'm supposed to be taller than you anyway. You've just let this last year go to your head."

She paid this comment no mind, continuing to study him. She reached out a finger and poked his chest experimentally.

"What was that for?"

"You're, like, really…" She gestured at him with both hands, not finding the words she wanted.

"Yeah, I am," he agreed. He wasn't sure what the words were either.

She shook her head, a small smile on her face. "Okay." Her face got serious again. "So, you said this thing you went to do would help you find Jay. Do you know where he is? Are you gonna go get him now that you're all big and everything?"

Steve nodded. "I sure am."

* * *

Steve's declaration to Rebecca that he was going to go save her brother was the first Peggy had heard of this plan, but she could hardly say she was surprised. Actually, she realized she would have been disappointed if that _wasn't_ his plan.

Unfortunately, Phillips was not of the same opinion. "No, Rogers!" he barked. "You are not going to Italy!"

"Why not?!" Steve demanded.

"I told you why not three days ago. It's a suicide mission and I'm not sending people in there to die."

"I know that, Sir, and I'm not talking about sending an army in, I'm talking about sending a small team that—"

"That is an option we're working on, but _if_ we're able to send a team in, that's not a team you're going to be on," Phillips interrupted.

"What?!" Steve cried. "Why the hell not?!"

"Watch your tone," Phillips warned. "Yes, it looks like the formula worked, but we don't know what you can do, we don't know what your limits are, or if you've got the magic now you'd need for something like this, and you have absolutely zero training. Until we get all that settled, you are still a liability and you aren't going anywhere."

"But, Sir, I _know_ I can—"

"No," Phillips cut him off. He sighed. "Look, I know you want in this fight, and we'll get you there, but not today. I've got…" He sighed again, and Peggy thought this might be the first time she'd ever seen him lost for words. The loss of Erskine was hitting him hard. "I've got a lot to deal with right now. We can't do a mission right now anyway, you're not ready for anything, and it'll take time until you are. Alright?"

Peggy recognized the look on Steve's face as the one he wore when he was trying not to punch someone, and it was a great deal more intimidating now that he no longer had to look up to do it. "I understand, Sir," he said coldly.

"Good." Phillips nodded. He seemed unperturbed by Steve's anger, but he looked exhausted. He sighed deeply and waved them to the door. "Go understand it somewhere else," he said wearily.

Peggy wondered, given his improved magical abilities, if Steve also had more control over his magic now—with the anger she could feel rolling off him in waves, she was a little surprised things weren't flying around the corridor as they walked away. "Steve," she started, not really sure what to say after that.

"Don't," Steve snapped, striding away from Phillips' office. Peggy had to jog a little to keep up with him. "I'm still going."

"Alone?" she asked.

"Apparently I have to. I'm not leaving them there."

She nodded, not expecting anything less of him. "I know." She would offer to go with him—she really wanted to—but that would be a bad idea. Phillips had promised her combat training at some point in the future as part of her job, but she hadn't received it yet. Steve didn't have any either, but Steve had the super-soldier serum now, and she'd seen what he could do. Steve would be fine. As much as it pained her to admit it, she would be in the way.

They continued on through the now-empty corridors, and she realized they were heading for the grounds. "Are you leaving now?" she asked.

"They've been gone for three weeks. The longer I wait, the less chance there is of getting them back. Yes, I'm going now."

"And, what, you're going to walk to Italy?" she asked, probably a littler snippier than she should have. She understood that Steve was angry, but there was no need to direct it at her.

He shot her a glare. "If I have to."

She put a hand on his arm. "Steve, wait."

He spun around to face her. "No, Peggy, I have to do this! I can't stay here while they just—"

He stopped abruptly as she smacked his arm. "Would you shut up for a minute and listen? Do you honestly think I'm trying to tell you _not_ to go and save our friends? You can do this, Steve. I know you can. I'm not telling you not to go, I'm telling you to wait because I've got an idea."

"Oh," he said quietly, his cheeks going red. "I'm sorry," he apologized, the anger falling from his face. "I—"

"It's alright," she said with a small smile. Neither of them were really at their best emotionally right now.

He smiled back, still looking a little embarrassed. "What's your idea?"

"You can't apparate, right?" she asked. He shook his head. She hadn't thought so—improved magic or not, you still needed to be taught that one. "I don't think it would do much good anyway—you wouldn't get within miles of the place with the anti-apparation spells our people have found around it, and starting off with the distance of an international jump for your first time is a bad idea. I think I know a way to get you in close. You go and pack while I get it sorted."

Steve nodded. The shoes he'd gotten yesterday were combat boots—all anyone had had around in his size, but he should probably change into something more practical than school dress. And he'd need some food to keep himself going. "Thanks," he told her, then turned around and headed for his dorm.

She made her way down to the dungeon. As she had thought, Howard had cleared out the middle space previously devoted to the capsule and was in the process of taking the submarine apart. "Howard?" she called, raising her voice to be heard over the noise. "I need a favor."

* * *

.


	28. Arnim Zola

_This is just a little one, so I figured I'd tack it on here so that Monday we can get straight to the rescue mission. This chapter does come with a content warning-there's the general concept of human experimentation, and a kind of messy "surgical" procedure.  
_

* * *

Bucky snapped back to reality in a cold sweat, and it took him several heart-pounding minutes to remember where he was. It wasn't until a soft, nasal voice that he hated more than he'd ever hated anything in his life said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Barnes. Nice to have you back with us," that it came back to him.

Hydra. The factory. The isolation ward. Bucky didn't know how long he'd been here. Maybe his whole life. It was hard to tell. He didn't think time happened in here—in this little room that was always dark, except when Zola left him alone, then it was even darker, and things scurried and clanked and creaked in the blackness, and people screamed and cried beyond the walls deeper in the dark.

"So," the little scientist continued. "How do you feel?"

It took an awful lot of work to move his eyes, but Bucky managed to turn them to glare at Zola. Everything hurt, and he thought he remembered why. Zola liked to invent spells and potions and test them on Bucky (and all the other people who were screaming in the dark). Right now, he was testing out some kind of healing potion. He'd given it to Bucky, then kept hurting him or giving him other, nastier potions and seeing how fast he recovered. None of it was supposed to kill him, but it sure felt like that's what Zola was trying to do.

Zola huffed. "We've been over this, Mr. Barnes. You answer me when I talk to you." Bucky continued to glare. "Fine," he sighed, pulling out his wand, and Bucky felt a jolt in his stomach before Zola muttered, "_Imperio_."

A terrifying, and by this point, familiar, lightness washed over Bucky, whiting out the pain and the fear and everything that was wrong, except for this, he knew this was wrong, but he couldn't make it go away and he floated, waiting for orders he could follow.

"Answer the question. How are you feeling?" Zola asked again, sounding kind of far away.

_Awful_, Bucky tried to say, but his mouth just moved soundlessly.

Zola arched an intrigued eyebrow. "Interesting," he said. "Raise your left hand."

Obediently, Bucky tried, but his fingers just twitched weakly. Zola made a note on his clipboard, and Bucky waited to be told what to do next. For several long minutes, nothing happened, then Zola twitched his wand and Bucky slammed back into himself with a choked grunt of pain.

"Well, that's not how that one was supposed to work," Zola said conversationally. Bucky closed his eyes and swallowed down the urge to cry. The potion hadn't done what Zola wanted, which meant he was going to try again. "Still," Zola said, with the cheerful attitude of a man trying to see the best in things. "Seeing as I've got you immobile, I may as well test out a few other things." And this time, Bucky did cry.

He couldn't move and he couldn't talk and he couldn't scream, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel anything. All he could do was lie there, staring at the ceiling through eyes blurred with tears, taking short, shallow breaths and trying to think about anything other than the hands that were currently wrist-deep in his intestines. Zola was moving things around with no purpose other than causing Bucky a lot of pain and giving the experimental potion something to try to heal.

Whether Zola had some scientific interest in gauging his reaction, or whether he was just some sick, sadistic psycho, he had some kind of magic that didn't actually allow Bucky to pass out whenever he did things like this (in addition to the spell that was keeping him from bleeding to death in the first place). Bucky had to be awake for all of it, to feel all of it, and though he could escape for a few seconds thinking about hugging his ma or reading to Becky or making Steve laugh or kissing Vicki Marlowe, it's like Zola knew he was trying to get away and would twist or pinch or cut something and yank him back to the agonizing present.

Zola looked up when Bucky let out a small whimper. "Starting to get some of your voice back, hmm?" he said. He looked up at the clock and pulled one bloody hand up out of Bucky's guts and grabbed a quill, scribbling a note on a piece of parchment. He grinned wickedly. "Ask me to stop, and I will."

Bucky's mouth moved, desperately trying to find the words that wouldn't quite come. He still had no control over his movements, but his chest started to heave as his breathing became more frantic in his attempt to give the words life. The increased motion of his chest tugged on something that Zola was still holding on to, making Bucky hiss in pain, but the words wouldn't come and a silent sob choked in his throat. Zola smiled and returned to his work.

Bucky kept moving his lips feverishly, working his throat until finally, _finally_, a whispered, "Please, stop," broke the silence.

Zola paused. "Alright," he said. "You see?" He pulled his hands out of Bucky's insides, holding them up in a mock gesture of surrender. "I keep my promises." He smiled and patted Bucky condescendingly on the cheek, and Bucky screwed his eyes shut and swallowed down a wave of nausea as his own blood was smeared across his face.

Zola cleaned off his hands and grabbed his wand, and Bucky felt things inside him start to shift back together. "Can't have you bleeding out internally on me," he said. "You've lasted a surprisingly long time. I'm going to get as much out of you as I can." He flicked his wand over to a table on the side, and a curved needle laced with surgical thread floated through the air. "That's the important part taken care of," he said, and he flicked the wand again and the needle and thread swooped down into the hole he'd cut in Bucky's torso. "Can't really test the healing potion if I fix everything, can we?"

He moved away across the lab and out of Bucky's line of sight. Bucky was starting to get familiar with this part. Zola would fix any damage he'd inflicted that might be immediately life-threatening, then leave the rest for this potion of his to deal with. Whatever this healing potion was, or maybe it was a healing portion of some bigger potion—Zola talked a lot, and Bucky's brain wasn't always all the way there—it was the first thing Zola had tested on him. He kept re-upping it whenever it started to wear off, making notes of how long that took, and then finding new and creative ways (both physical and magical) to hurt him to test how well it worked. Bucky knew Zola wasn't trying to kill him, but he was starting to wish that he would. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

He drifted off for a while—the pinch of stitches pulling organs and skin back together was negligible after the pain of Zola picking them apart. Whatever spell Zola used to keep him from passing out, he would just let it wear off instead of removing it, and Bucky knew he wasn't really sleeping, even though he sort of felt like he was dreaming. He floated away and thought it might have been Easter Break when he landed—the last time everything was really okay. His pop was still home. His ma wasn't worried. Steve hadn't gotten sick the whole break. Becky was starting to get excited about going to Hogwarts in the fall. She'd been so happy to have the two of them home, and even though the Dementors were gone and they could go outside, she still had some books she wanted them to go through and do what she called 'doing a story' with her like they'd done at Christmas. He and Steve had complied happily, and she'd declared that Steve's White Rabbit wasn't as good as his Gollum had been, but Bucky was the best Mad Hatter Wonderland had ever had.

The dream crumbled away as his breath caught in his throat and his eyes screwed up with hot, fresh tears as he realized he was never going to see his little Munchkin or his best friend again. He hoped the two of them could take care of each other, now that he was gone.

When he found his way back to his body, it was still lying on the table, but the room was dark and cold. Zola had gone, taking the light with him. Bucky could move a little bit now, and he was able to raise one arm enough in its restraint to slide it under his shirt and feel the skin of his stomach, tender and swollen and slick with blood and something sticky. Rough lines of stitch work wended their way across his midsection, holding him together just enough to stay alive while the potion set to its work. The heat he could feel felt good on his chilly fingers, and he knew it meant infection was setting in. Zola's healing potion was supposed to fix that too, but Bucky hoped that it would be too slow. He was pretty sure he was already dead. He just needed something to let him go.

But it wouldn't.

In the morning, after a long night of the dark and the cold and the noise of people dying, Zola came back and he smiled and he seemed happy. Whatever was supposed to be healing Bucky wasn't working as fast as he wanted it to, but it was working.

He was talking a lot like he usually did, but Bucky wasn't listening because Steve was there. Maybe. He looked like he was there, but Zola couldn't see him, so maybe he wasn't.

"You haven't slept in a really long time, Buck," Steve said. He was perched on the exam table across from Bucky's, swinging his little feet back and forth. "You may just be imagining me," he pointed out gently.

"Still good to see you," Bucky said.

One corner of Steve's mouth quirked up in a smile. "I miss you too."

" 'm sorry, Stevie," Bucky rasped.

"What for?" Steve asked, tilting his head curiously.

"When your ma died," he explained. "Promised I'd always be there for you. 'n now 'm not." He'd never broken a promise to Steve before.

Steve smiled sadly and, okay, he probably wasn't real because Zola just stuck his hand through him to grab something. Zola said something Bucky didn't hear, then there was a hand on his jaw forcing his mouth open and something sour and cold as ice was being poured into his mouth. He coughed and gagged and the hand was over his mouth now, holding it shut and tilting his head back while another hand massaged his throat and forced him to swallow.

Steve was still there when the hands went away. "I'm so sorry I can't do anything," he said in a small, sad voice. Things that might not have really been there were starting to dance and whisper on the edge of Bucky's awareness and everything was starting to spin, but Steve was staying in one place, although he was starting to flicker around the edges.

"S'alright," Bucky told him. He swallowed hard. "Please, don't leave me," he whispered.

Steve stopped flickering. He smiled. "I won't. I'm with you 'til the end of the line."

* * *

_To be continued! But don't worry-you and Bucky only have to wait until Monday, and the long-awaited rescue mission will finally happen! In the meantime, I'd love it if you'd drop me a note and let me know what you're thinking._


	29. The Rescue Mission

_Alright, it's hero time! Steve Rogers to the rescue!  
_

* * *

Steve still wasn't sure how Peggy had pulled this off. One minute, he was yelling at Professor Phillips, then Peggy was sending him off to pack and the next thing he knew, they were in an airplane. An actual airplane. Steve had never flown anywhere before.

Howard Stark was up in the front, adjusting instruments and humming to himself as he flew. Occasionally he would turn around and throw back some sort of comment or joke. Steve was in the back with Peggy. The hum of the plane was kind of loud, but they raised their voices and hashed out a plan for what he should actually do when he got there. The first thing they'd worked on was how to use a parachute. There were some Aurors who could levitate themselves through the air—not flying exactly, but more of a controlled fall—but given that Steve had never really been able to levitate anything before this morning, they decided not to risk it. The parachute seemed simple enough, although it took Peggy a while to figure out how to make it invisible. (They'd left Hogwarts just before lunch, and though it would take almost five hours to get to where they were going, it wouldn't be dark enough for Steve to jump out unnoticed.)

Once that was settled, they went over some stealth spells and likely points of entry and all the intel Peggy had on the place, but, given that no one on their side had ever seen the factory except from the air, there was only so much planning they could do. Once he got down there, Steve was pretty much going to have to wing it. He wasn't too happy about that—he'd always been a planner. Winging it was more Bucky's thing. But it needed doing, so he'd do it. He kept reminding himself that there was no need to rush. It was better that he get down there and take his time and figure out the lay of the land—rushing in not knowing what was going on was a good way to get himself and other people killed. He could plan things once he got there.

Steve felt a jolt in his stomach as Howard announced that they'd arrived. This was it. They circled the factory for a few minutes—Howard had made sure the plane was invisible, which kept them from being spotted and had the added bonus of keeping them from getting shot at by Nazis on the way. Peggy cast a revealing charm down in the direction of the factory, causing the magical protection around it to flicker briefly.

"Drop me where I can land outside of that," he called up to Howard, who tossed him a quick salute and adjusted course slightly. Hydra probably wasn't protecting against people dropping from the sky, but even if it let him through, it could still set off some kind of alarm.

"How will you get in it?" Peggy asked. They'd gone over a few different options on the way here, unsure what would be the best way.

Steve pondered the terrain below him. A line of trucks was headed for the factory, a couple miles out still. "There," he pointed. "They've got to let them in." The road ended at the factory—there was nowhere else they could be going. "I can get on or under one of those."

Peggy nodded. "Good luck," she told him, smiling and trying not to look worried.

Steve smiled back, pulled his goggles down over his face, and jumped out of the side of the plane. His descent slowed as he tugged on the parachute cord, although it was very unnerving to not be able to see the parachute above him.

He landed a little roughly, jarring his knees and stumbling to the ground. He was glad Peggy wasn't there to see him fight his way out from underneath the folds of the parachute he couldn't see, because he got the feeling it looked pretty ridiculous. Still, he was on the ground, and he was here now. He made his way to the road and found a tree to hide behind, listening to the rumble of approaching trucks. He considered the approaching vehicles. They were going to be full of either supplies that would need unloading, or men that would object to his joining them, so jumping in the back wasn't an option. He whipped the invisibility cloak Peggy had gotten for him out of his backpack and tugged it on. There was a narrow space between the cab and covered bed of each truck—he could squeeze into the space on the last truck and sit there, unseen, until everything was unloaded and he could get away.

As the trucks drew nearer, he jogged out toward the last one, crouching awkwardly to make sure his feet weren't visible. He approached from the empty passenger side and grabbed the side of the truck, swinging himself up. The space turned out to be narrower than he'd estimated—he realized he'd still been picturing his smaller self when doing his calculations—but he was on the truck, and some awkward squeezing and bending got him into the space. He wouldn't be able to get out of it very quickly, which shouldn't be a problem, but he kept his wand out just in case.

Because of the way he was positioned, Steve couldn't see the gate or the guards until they were already passing them, which he supposed was good. It meant no one noticed him. The trucks ground to a halt, and he listened to the men disembarking. He couldn't pick up any useful information, since they all seemed to be speaking German, but at least the truck was emptied faster than if he'd been waiting for someone to unload cargo. Still, he waited until the area around the trucks fell silent. It seemed to take forever.

Very carefully, he wormed his way out of the tight space, performing a minor feat of gymnastics in doing so. He frowned down at his shirt—he'd intended to change before coming, but there hadn't been anything he fit into now except the clothes he'd gotten at the lab—they were a larger version of his school things, and he'd just torn a hole in the front of his shirt. Oh well. Not really the time for that.

Keeping well out of the way of any guards, he made a slow circle of the factory. The place was huge. Not a lot of doors, though. He counted four regular-sized doors, four larger, loading bay areas, and one massive garage-style door that took up almost one whole side of the factory. Based on the light coming from the windows above it, he was guessing that one led to the factory floor. Whatever they were making, and eventually intending to take out of there, it had to be enormous.

He didn't know what kind of work shifts Hydra had for its prisoners, but based on the noise, they were still on the floor working. The sun was setting, and he decided to wait until it got dark and see if anything changed. He continued studying the building, daring at one point to sneak close enough to realize that there was some kind of keypad on each door. Alright, he'd have to follow someone in. There were plenty of Hydra agents out on the grounds, so that shouldn't be a problem. He made his way to the darkest end of the building—less people to disturb once he got inside.

It seemed to take forever—waiting really was the worst part—but the sun finally set, and as darkness fell, the factory got quieter as the prisoners left the floor and returned to wherever they were being kept. The dark end of the building where he was waiting, thankfully, remained dark, and eventually, a lone Hydra guard made his way over to the door Steve was watching.

Steve rushed forward, taking care to tread quietly. He put out a hand to catch the door as it swung shut. Taking a deep breath, he pulled it back open and burst inside, bringing up a shield spell that caught the surprised guard full in the face and sent him flying across the room where he crumpled to the floor and did not get up. Steve kept the shield up as he scanned the room, making sure no one else was there. He lowered the shield and conjured some ropes to bind the unconscious guard, then removed his invisibility cloak. He couldn't move very fast and keep all of himself hidden, and he felt like he was going to need speed more now that he was in. He looked down at the guard. He was a little shorter than Steve was, but wide enough. Steve dragged him back behind a stack of boxes and took his uniform, though he had to untie him and then tie him up again to do so. He stuck his school clothes, helmet and goggles into his backpack, then rolled up the sleeves and the cuffs of the uniform so that it looked as though he had intended for them to look that way, and not like they were too short. The combat boots he was wearing were similar enough to the smaller ones on the Hydra guy's feet that he didn't think it would make much of a difference.

He carefully made his way through the factory, sticking to the shadows, and walking with purpose when he couldn't. There weren't a lot of people around anyway—he supposed even dark wizards got tired at night. He found himself on the factory floor, which seemed to run the length of the building. Vast pieces of machinery hung from the ceiling, suspended by chains or charms and resting for the night. Large machines rose up from the floor—conveyor belts, banks of cogs and levers, boilers, furnaces, and who knew what else. Some of the pieces laying on tables and conveyor belts had an unnatural bluish glow to them. He didn't know what any of it meant, but he grabbed the biggest one that would fit in his pocket. Howard would probably appreciate taking a look at it.

There were a couple of signs posted outside the first hallway he came to. He couldn't make head or tails of the German and wished he'd thought of that before he came—surely the SSR could wrangle up a translator charm like Jacques had. He picked the corridor that branched off to the left. It was darker, and quieter. He didn't feel like the prisoners would be a particularly lively bunch. The first door he came to turned out to be a large storage room—the walls were lined with various weapons. Okay. If the prisoners were down this way, this would be a good place to stop on the way out. He closed the door again but left it unlocked.

The hall curved and then opened up into a vast room, and a happy flutter sang through Steve's chest. The room was full of floor-to ceiling cages that were full of people. He'd found them! Although…His eyes scanned the room. There were a hell of a lot more people in here than one hundred and fifty. Peggy had said something about wizards and Allies, but still...This must be a bigger operation than they'd thought.

He peered more closely into the darkness. He counted three figures walking around. Once he was sure there weren't any others, he edged into the room, staying in the shadow until the nearest guard walked by. Steve shot a silent stunning spell at him and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. His gun clattered loudly across the floor, and, just as Steve had hoped, the other two came running—not close enough to one another to start with to provide a united front, allowing him to take them down one at a time. People were moving in the cages now, heads stretching up to see what was causing the commotion.

Steve rifled through the pockets of the downed guards before tying them up. He could unlock the cages magically, of course, but since he was the only one in here with a wand, he could pass out the keys and get things opened faster.

He made his way to the first cage, where the figures inside had already gotten to their feet. "Who are you?" asked a familiar voice from inside.

Steve beamed. "Gabe?"

The voice sputtered, and then Gabe was pressing up against the bars. "What…" His eyes went comically wide. "_Steve_?!"

There was a flurry of motion inside the cage as the other figures rushed to the door. Jacques, Monty, Jim and Dugan were staring at him in shock. A tall, skinny kid Steve didn't know stood behind them looking confused. Steve laughed in relief. "Hey, guys."

"What the actual hell?" Jim asked as Steve tapped the lock with his wand and opened the door. They hurried out to crowd around him, and, just as Becky had done, Jim poked him in the chest. "Dude…" He shook his head, lost for words.

Steve smiled. "Yeah, I know. Are you guys okay?"

"We're alive," Monty replied. "What in the bloody hell happened to you?"

"Really long story," Steve replied. "Professor Erskine had this potion, and it was a whole thing, and I'll tell you the rest later. Here." He handed three sets of keys to Jacques, Monty and the skinny kid. "Start going around and getting people out."

Dugan was shaking his head, smiling. "Wow. Not such a runt now, are ya? You've gotta be at least as tall as me."

Steve smiled. "It's good to see you too, Dugan." He looked around, eyeing the people coming out of the other cages. "Do you guys know where Bucky is?"

His friends' faces fell, and Steve's heart dropped into his stomach as they looked at each other uncomfortably. "Where is he?" he asked again.

Jim opened his mouth, then closed it again. "We don't know," he said at last. "They took him somewhere, what, five…?" He looked at Gabe for confirmation. "Five days ago. He wasn't doing so good."

"Where'd they take him?" Steve asked, surprised at how level his voice was.

Jim nodded to the other end of the room, where Steve could just make out the entrance to another hallway.

Steve nodded. "Alright. I'm gonna go find him. You guys head out that way," he said, nodding back the way he came. "There's a storage closet full of weapons right before you get back to the work floor. I left it unlocked. Get everybody armed, and give 'em hell on the way out. I'll meet you guys at the tree line to the south and we'll figure out how to get everybody home."

Dugan nodded, and moved away to start letting everyone else know the plan. Gabe and Jim looked at each other uncertainly. "Steve," Gabe started uncomfortably. "I don't…I mean, I hope you find him, man, but…No one's ever come back from the isolation ward."

"I'm gonna go find him," Steve repeated levelly. He wasn't dead. He _wasn't_. "I'll meet you guys outside." He moved off, then paused, turning back. "Be careful."

* * *

Johann Schmidt was taking dinner in his office when the distant but unmistakable cadence of gunfire sounded out the window in front of him. Rising to his feet, he looked out over the factory floor, surprised to find it swarming with escaped prisoners. With a growl, he stalked down the hallway to the security office, finding it empty. His men appeared to all be out in the fight. He snapped an announcement into the intercom anyway, ordering anyone not fighting to get out there and get this mess under control. He then leaned over the security console, running through the grainy tapes in an effort to discover what had gone wrong. The door opened behind him just as he found the answer, eyes going wide.

"Pack some things, Arnim," he said without turning around. "We're leaving."

He moved to another console and started flipping up casings and flicking switches.

"What are you doing?!" Zola cried.

Schmidt paused in his activation of the self-destruct mechanism. He pointed to the frozen image on the screen. "Our men would appear to be outmatched."

Zola adjusted his glasses on his nose and leaned in to squint at the screen before his eyes widened just as Schmidt's had. "They sent him here?" he murmured. Their spies had informed them of Erskine's latest test of his serum (which had led to the assassination yesterday), and they had been able to provide some information about the test subject as well.

Schmidt shrugged. "I would not have thought it of Phillips to send in a child—certainly not so soon after the test. Although, the serum seems to be quite effective, doesn't it?" He continued flicking the switches. Perhaps his men could get the prisoners under control, though, given the sheer number of them, it seemed unlikely, but he didn't think they had it in them to stop the new super-soldier. He didn't know if an explosion would do it either, but it would at least keep any valuable information out of the hands of the SSR. He looked over his shoulder to where Zola was still staring at the screen. "You've got three minutes, Arnim. If there's any research you want to keep, I'd suggest you grab it before meeting me on the roof." The men were expendable—and all pledged to die for Hydra's cause anyway—but the little scientist was useful and would be worth keeping around.

Zola hurried off, muttering to himself about what he would need. Schmidt flipped the last switch and made for the weapons testing room. Everything here could be replaced, but the Tesseract was carefully removed and fitted back into its secure holding case. That was all he needed.

* * *

Steve jogged down the hallway Jim had directed him to. It was long and dark and cold, and was really living up to the name of 'isolation ward'. He could actually _feel_ the silence pressing in against him. "_Homenum revelio_," he whispered, and a little light shot out from his wand and disappeared down the corridor. Was there _anyone_ here? It was so quiet. After a minute, the little light came dancing back, much smaller than when it had left. There was one person here. He swallowed hard. Just one?

He continued down the corridor, poking his head into the first door he came to, then instantly pulling it back again and trying not to throw up. There was…most of a person lying on an exam table. Steve didn't want to know if the parts that weren't there were because of what Hydra had done to whoever it was, or because of the rats that had crawled up onto the table.

He refused to think that that one or any of the other dead bodies he found—some of which were in better shape or more fresh than others—could be Bucky. He sent out the little spell again, and this time there were two people, and he was closer to them. He starting jogging again.

He rounded a corner and saw at the far end a little man in a long coat and hat running out into the hallway. His arms were full of rolls of parchment, and he seemed to be in a terrible hurry. The man saw Steve looking at him, let out an audible squeak of surprise, then scampered away. Steve ran after him, pausing outside the room he'd just left. That guy obviously wasn't a prisoner, so, right now, he didn't really care. Cautiously, he crept into the room the man had come out of. He could hear someone breathing in there, muttering unintelligible things in the darkness.

Steve lit his wand and moved closer to the voice, and this time he did throw up. In front of him, washed out and deathly pale in the white light of his wand, was Bucky. He was thinner than when Steve had seen him last, shivering on the metal table and lying in what could only be a puddle of his own blood. A rough-spun green shirt—not the one he'd left school in—seemed to hang loosely on him as he lay there, dried patches of blood all across the front. But the worst was his eyes. They were open, blinking lethargically at the ceiling, but Bucky wasn't in them. They were glassy and vacant, millions of miles away.

"Bucky?" Steve whispered. He got no response and stepped cautiously forward, taking Bucky's shoulders and shaking him gently. "Bucky?" he asked again. Bucky's head lolled with the motion, but he didn't respond, and Steve swallowed down the urge to be sick again. Bucky was alive. The rest of it…They could fix the rest of it.

He ripped away the straps holding Bucky to the table, and his friend jostled with the movement. He blinked a little faster and his mouth moved, though no sound came out. "Buck?" Steve asked hopefully, leaning in closer to his face.

When Bucky didn't respond any further, Steve looked down at his wand. "_Ennervate_," he whispered, tapping Bucky lightly on the arm. Maybe the rejuvenation spell would help him clear his head.

Bucky blinked rapidly and rolled his head a little bit. A lopsided, drunken smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. "Steve?"

A relieved smile broke out across Steve's face. "Hey, Buck!" Bucky didn't look all the way back yet—either Steve hadn't done the spell right, or whatever Hydra had given him was really powerful—but he was responding and he recognized Steve. He was in there.

"Steve," Bucky said again happily. "Y're back. W's wondr'n where y'went."

"I'm right here, Buck," Steve assured him. "I'm right here."

"S'good t' see you 'gain," Bucky slurred, still looking up at him with that lopsided smile.

"It's good to see you too, man," Steve replied, unable to keep from smiling himself. Keeping a firm grip on Bucky's shoulders, he carefully moved him up until he was sitting on the table. Thankfully, the blood on the table appeared to be old—though it clung to his shirt and his arms, it was tacky and dried, and none seemed to be coming out of Bucky at the moment. Steve clapped a hand carefully to the back of his head. He was alive. He wasn't okay, but he was alive. He would be okay. "I thought you were dead."

Bucky scrunched up his nose in confusion. "Thought you were smaller."

Steve huffed a laugh and opened his mouth to respond, but an explosion rocked the floor beneath him. His eyes darted back toward the door and the direction of the noise. There was a map there, with what looked like locations of other Hydra factories on it. He remembered Peggy saying they didn't know where any of the other ones were, and he hoped he'd remember it for later. There wasn't exactly time now.

"Alright, we gotta go," he said, turning back to Bucky who was staring at a spot on the wall somewhere over Steve's left shoulder. "Bucky!"

Bucky drew in a sharp breath and pulled his eyes back to Steve. "Yeah?"

"Bucky, we gotta go. Can you walk?" He had no objections to carrying Bucky out of here, but if he was going to have to fight anyone on the way out, it'd be easier to have his hands free.

Bucky didn't say anything, but slid forward off the table until his feet hit the floor. Steve shot out a hand to catch him as he hissed in pain and his knees kept bending, pulling him down closer to the floor. Carefully, Steve hitched him back up. "I got it," Bucky said, starting to shuffle his feet.

Steve kept an arm securely around him as they went—Bucky seemed able to go, but not to keep himself up. "How come you're so big?" Bucky wondered as they went.

"Magic," Steve replied, eyes darting back and forth as he scanned for possible threats. It might have been a little curt, but it was hardly the time for the whole story.

Bucky sniffed, seemingly unconcerned by Steve's tone. "Okay."

A knot twisted in Steve's stomach, and he tried not to think about just how out of it Bucky had to be right now for that to be his only response. What had they been doing to him?

Explosions continued to rock the floor, getting stronger and louder. Steve could see light flickering as they passed through the prison section and back into the hallway that led to the work floor—fire. The place was going up, and he picked up the pace. He smiled as they passed the weapons store room and saw that the place looked like a tornado had passed through it. He wondered how many guns Dugan had.

The smile vanished as they came out onto the floor—another explosion sounded, a bank of machinery going up in a ball of flame, one in a series of several that were now blocking the way to the exit. A set of stairs to the right seemed to be their only option, and Steve could see a door on a catwalk several floors up. He remembered seeing a couple of sets of stairs on the outside of the building from his earlier walkaround. If they could get up there, they could get out that way.

He moved Bucky so that he was in front of him—that way Steve could catch him if he fell back—guiding his shaking hands to the rails. Bucky latched on, and with a nudge from Steve, started to climb. By the time they got to the second level, Bucky was slowing down. Steve put an arm around him and guided him to the landing, moving in front of him to look him over. He was breathing heavily, and what little lucidity he'd had was draining out of his gaze as the rejuvenation spell wore off, his eyes wild and frightened as they darted around the inferno. He jumped at the sound of another explosion.

"Bucky?" Steve asked gently. Bucky didn't seem to hear him. "Hey, Buck, look at me." He put a hand to Bucky's face and Bucky flinched at the contact, but moved his head as Steve directed his gaze to meet his. "Look at me. That's it," he said encouragingly as Bucky's eyes locked on to Steve's. Steve swallowed down a frightened lump in his throat. "Hey, I know you're scared, man. I know there's a lot going on right now that you don't understand." He swallowed down another lump and prayed that this was something that could be undone. "But it's okay, alright? It's gonna be okay. Do you trust me?"

He wasn't sure what kind of a response he was expecting, and was surprised when Bucky tilted his head to the side, eyebrows furrowing in bemusement at Steve's question, and said, "I always trust you," like it was silly that Steve would even ask.

Steve smiled, blinking away the sudden warm tears prickling in his eyes. "Okay," he said. He nodded. "Okay. So, everything that's going on right now, don't worry about it, alright? I got it."

"Okay," Bucky said softly.

"Okay," Steve repeated. "You just stick with me, alright? I'll take care of everything else."

Bucky nodded, his breathing slowing back down to normal. His eyes quit darting around the destruction surrounding them and stayed on Steve. Steve felt the sudden urge to cry, amazed that as hurt and broken and scared as he was, Bucky still trusted him that much.

As the spell wore off, it was taking not only Bucky's limited clarity, but also his ability to walk along with it. Steve settled on lifting him onto his back as the best way to carry him. Bucky seemed to have enough coherency left to understand that he should wrap his arms around Steve's neck. With Bucky holding on, Steve was able to reach one hand back to hold on to him, leaving the other free to hold his wand at the ready.

They made it up two more flights of stairs, drawing near to the bridge Steve had been heading for that would take them to the door, when a voice called out across the flaming space between them. "Mr. Rogers!" it boomed. "So nice to get the chance to finally meet you!"

Steve looked up to see a man in a long dark coat standing on the other side of the bridge. He was standing next to the little man from the corridor, and Steve felt a sudden swell of anger as he realized the little man had been packing up important papers before the place exploded, fully intending to leave Bucky there to die.

"I've seen the 'before' pictures and I must say, even I am impressed at the scope of Doctor Erskine's work," the man remarked.

Steve frowned. Schmidt.

Schmidt shoved a briefcase at the little man and started moving slowly across the bridge. Steve backed up against the railing and lowered Bucky down to sit against it, keeping his eyes on Schmidt the whole time. "Stay here, okay?" he whispered. "I'll be right back." Bucky nodded.

Steve moved forward, hand on his wand. Schmidt tilted his head, as if evaluating Steve. "A little generic, perhaps," he concluded. "But still impressive."

"You have no idea," Steve growled, lunging forward and slamming his fist into Schmidt's face.

The head of Hydra staggered back from the blow but kept his feet. "Haven't I?" he asked, a predatory smirk on his face. He leapt forward, throwing out a fist of his own, and Steve automatically pulled up a shield spell. Instead of it sending Schmidt staggering back again, however, he felt Schmidt's fist connect with the spell with enough force to send Steve back a few steps.

Instinct from years of getting pounded into the ground kicked in, and he rolled back with the blow, using the momentum to hit the floor and spring back up, catching Schmidt squarely in the chest with both feet. That did send him back, and the ground beneath them shuddered. At first, Steve thought it was another explosion, but as he quickly climbed to his feet, he realized the little man had pulled some sort of lever and the bridge was separating, pulling the two of them apart.

"No matter what Erskine may have told you," Schmidt shouted. "I was always going to be his greatest success!" He reached up to his neck, and Steve's mouth dropped open in disgust as he started peeling the skin away from his face. The skin and the hair came off in one large piece, exposing bright red flesh stretched tight over his skull. Steve swallowed down a wave of nausea. Erskine had told him the formula had gone wrong with Schmidt, saying he'd lost most of his humanity in the process, but Steve had never imagined _this_.

"You pretend you can be a simple soldier," Schmidt called. "That you can fight the good fight just like everyone else." His tone was cruel and mocking. "But in reality, Mr. Rogers, you and I are not so different. We have left humanity behind, the two of us! And unlike you…" He gestured with both hands at his chest, grinning and showing way too many teeth. "I embrace it proudly." He shoved the little man toward the elevator behind them. "Perhaps, if you survive this, we will meet again someday. I would be interested to see what becomes of you." His frightening grin widened, he shot a mock salute across the chasm at Steve, then vanished.

A soft whimper caught Steve's ear despite another explosion going off beneath them, and he spun around to see Bucky pressed up against the railing behind him, curling in on himself smaller than Steve would have thought possible, eyes wide and terrified. Steve crossed the space between them in two steps and dropped to his knees in front of him. "Bucky?" He put his hands on Bucky's face and turned him gently to look at him. "Bucky, it's me. I'm right here. It's okay."

Bucky may have retained a little bit of awareness of his surroundings, but any of the short-lived clarity he had gained was clearly gone. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak as well, his mouth moving wordlessly as one of his hands pawed clumsily at Steve's shirt. His fingers caught in the chest pocket and he tightened his grip, the bunch of material in his fist seemingly giving him a little bit of stability. Steve swallowed down another wave of rage and fear and smiled warmly at him instead. "It's okay," he said again. "I gotcha." Steve closed one hand over the one Bucky had holding on to his pocket, and his ragged breathing started to slow down again. His roaming eyes locked on Steve's, and he nodded slowly.

Steve managed to get Bucky on his back again, and though he had to hold on tighter now, Bucky still maintained a weak grip around his neck. He moved back in the direction of the bridge, pointing his wand at the lever on the other side and bringing the two segments back together again. He had no desire to run into Schmidt again—he just needed to get out and get Bucky safe—but next to the elevator was another door, and he was pleased when he opened it and was greeted with a slap of cold night air to the face and the sight of a long, narrow staircase stretching toward the ground.

"Alright, Buck," he said, patting one of the arms around his neck. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

Jim was standing on the edge of the tree line, shaking just a little bit with adrenaline and feeling more alive than he ever had in his life. He couldn't believe they'd made it out. He couldn't believe they were still alive. He couldn't believe that tiny little Steve Rogers, of all the people in the world, had busted in there all on his own and saved their lives. He tilted his head back and looked up at the stars, then closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath of cold, fresh air and laughed in relief.

Okay. He shook his head. They were free, and they were alive, but they weren't in the clear yet. Altogether, there were about four hundred of them waiting in the trees, and they were in pretty sorry shape. Monty had rounded up a couple of people and was getting an exact number. Jim set himself to checking exactly how badly off they were. He knew Gabe had quit puking all the time, but he was still sick and pretty shaky—flu, if Jim had to guess. Dugan had it too, although Jim wondered if anything short of the Black Plague would actually take the guy off his feet. Monty was limping but making pretty good time, and Jacques—last Jim had seen him—had done something to his knee. (He was getting worried about Jacques—he'd lost him right around the time they raided the weapons room, and he had yet to turn up.) Jim himself was almost exclusively using his left arm—the right one had gotten dislocated a while back, and he didn't think it went back in right. Although, being forced to keep working instead of giving it a rest hadn't helped.

He started working his way around the group. He couldn't heal anything magically right now, but he knew some non-magical first aid. That Donovan kid from Bucky's unit did too, and he helped Jim check everyone out and do what they could to patch up those wounded fighting their way out and everyone else who'd been hurt before. Once Jim was able to communicate to him what they were trying to do, it turned out Ivan had some decent medical training too. Jim focused on fixing people up and not on wondering if Steve had found Bucky or if he was going to make it back out. He didn't think Bucky was still alive, but the arrival of this new Steve had given him a spark of hope again.

Everyone gasped in surprise as the rumblings coming from the factory behind them turned into a full-on explosion. He really, really hoped Steve had made it out of there, but he couldn't help smiling anyway—about time that place got blown to hell.

Gabe tapped his arm and pointed back in the direction of the factory, and Jim shook his head and grinned. There was Steve, jogging toward them in the darkness, sooty and sweaty and filthy but very much alive. Then he laughed as he realized Steve wasn't alone—he was carrying someone on his back, and the little shrimp had actually done it. He found Bucky.

Jim's joy was short-lived, however, when they got close enough for him to see the shape Bucky was in. Even in the dark, he could tell his friend was pale, bloody and dirty, barely conscious enough to maintain his grip on Steve. He curled in on himself protectively, moaning in pain as Steve carefully set him down to lean against a tree. Then Jim saw his eyes and he felt a cold weight drop into his stomach. Last time he'd seen Bucky, his eyes had been sick and sad and tired, but aware—now they were hollow and vacant and lost, staring aimlessly into the sky and not taking any notice of what was going on around him. What the hell had they done to him?

"What happened?" Gabe whispered, horrified.

"I don't know," Steve said, shaking his head. "But he's alive." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, but he was right. Bucky was alive, which was more than any of them had expected. Healers could figure out the rest.

"So, what now?" Dugan asked.

"Well," Steve exhaled, looking around. "Am I the only one here with a wand?"

"Yeah, they confiscated all of ours when they caught us," Gabe said, looking forlornly back at the factory.

Jim sighed. He supposed his redwood and thunderbird feather wand was in there somewhere, burned to cinders. "They've all got to be gone now."

"Mmm, je ne sais pas à ce sujet…" came a very smug-sounding familiar voice from behind him. Jim spun around to see Jacques standing there with a large metal box, the sad remains of a lock dangling from a loop on the front. He lifted the lid with a smile, and Jim's mouth dropped open. It was full to the brim with wands—long, thin, short, thick, smooth, knobbly, rough, polished, grubby, chipped, sleek _wands_.

Dugan laughed. "Oh, I could just kiss you!"

Jacques turned to Gabe with a puzzled expression, who grinned and leaned over to whisper the translation. (Although the rest of them had picked up some decent French over the years, Jacques had been pretty reliant on his now-confiscated translator charm and still didn't really know any English. Jim wondered how hard it would be for him to get a new one.) Jacques' eyebrows furrowed skeptically as he took in Dugan's statement. "Je pense que je préférerais que vous vous rasiez en premier," he replied, eying Dugan's mustache.

They all laughed at that. Even Steve. Each of them grabbed a wand—they could sort out which ones belonged to who later—and Jacques limped off, offering wands to all the captured wizards.

"So," Dugan started again. "What now?"

Steve wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. "Okay. How many people are even here?"

"Four hundred and seven," Monty said, popping out from the shadows. "Nine, counting the two of you." He looked down at Bucky and blanched, but looked back up again quickly, making no comment.

"Alright," Steve replied. "Dugan, I want you to find about ten other people who are in good shape. Make sure they've all got a wand, and you guys patrol around where we are. Keep an eye out until everybody can get out of here."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Dugan said, grinning and saluting before walking back to the bigger crowd.

"Monty, find Jacques, and I want you guys to apparate back to Hogsmeade. Get up to school and let Professor Phillips and Peggy know we're coming in with four hundred and nine people, and we're gonna need Healers and food and water and probably somebody to explain things to the non-wizards and figure out how to get them home."

"Yes, sir," Monty said crisply, marching off to find Jacques.

"Gabe, can you find some people and start sorting everyone into groups of about ten? Each group needs at least one person who can apparate. I'll come help you. Jim…" Steve trailed off, swallowing nervously. "I'll be back. See if you can…See if you can do anything for him," he finished, nodding down at Bucky. Jim nodded.

Steve moved off with Gabe, and Jim could hear him instructing people on how to group up, where to go, and how many times the apparators needed to come back before they stayed in Hogsmeade. He tuned it out and turned his attention first to his shoulder—fixing it with a tap of his wand so he could use both his hands—and then to Bucky, who was shivering and still staring blankly up at the sky. "Bucky?" he asked, not really expecting a response, and not getting one. He put a hand to his neck—Bucky flinched slightly at the contact—and felt his pulse and the warmth of his skin. He still had a fever, though not nearly as bad as when they dragged him off. Jim muttered a quick spell to bring it down a little. Then he ran a diagnostic spell over him, and ended up having to do so several more times. Whatever was going on with him was complicated as hell.

"Well?" Steve asked, dropping to knees beside him. Jim jumped a little, surprised. He'd been so focused on deciphering the diagnostic spells, he hadn't been paying attention to anything else. Now he could hear the sharp crack of people apparating away into the night.

"Well," Jim started slowly. "I think he's got pneumonia." He'd thought that before, back in the cage, but now he was sure. He was also dehydrated, malnourished, and had lost an awful lot of blood.

Steve nodded. "But what about…" He didn't seem to know how to finish.

Jim sighed. "There's…There is a _lot_ of magic going on here. There's spells and potions I've never seen before, and they're all tangled up. It's, well, it's no wonder he's messed up right now."

"Can you fix it?" Steve asked hopefully.

Jim was already shaking his head. "No. I don't have that kind of training. I'm just a field medic. I know enough to know that I might really hurt him if I started messing around with what he's got going on." Steve's face fell and Jim continued. "But we can get him back to a Healer, and they can help. And whatever else is wrong with him, he's not dying."

"Are you sure?"

Jim nodded. That much, he could tell. If he'd been left like this for another day or so, then no, he wouldn't have felt confident in saying that, but he was stable enough right now to get to someone who could help. Curious about something he couldn't quite place from the diagnostic, Jim reached out a hand for the front of Bucky's shirt. For the first time since Steve brought him out here, Bucky reacted, although not in a way that either of them wanted. He pulled up one uncoordinated arm across his midsection like he was trying to shield himself, rolling away from Jim enough that Steve had to grab his shoulder to keep him from falling over, and making a noise like a hurt puppy. Jim swallowed down a knot of revulsion at the sound—no one should ever have to sound like that.

"It's okay, Bucky," he said gently. "I'm not gonna hurt you." He carefully reached over and moved Bucky's arm, and Bucky let him, although it looked more like an act of resignation than trust. Gingerly, he lifted the hem of Bucky's shirt, then clapped his other hand to his mouth in horror at the sight that greeted him.

"What the hell?" Steve whispered.

Dark, ugly lines of jagged stitches ran haphazardly across Bucky's stomach. The skin was stretched tight between the lines, and swollen and red and knotted where it was sewn back together. Blood oozed slowly from between the threads. Jim quickly lifted his wand and waved it over the injured area, then paused, tilting his head in confusion and repeating the spell.

"What?" Steve asked worriedly.

"It…" There wasn't actually anything wrong. Okay, yeah, there were holes in his torso being held together with string, but underneath it all… "There's nothing there," Jim said.

"What are you talking about?" Steve demanded.

"These should be really deep wounds," Jim pointed out. "But everything underneath it is fine. I mean, I can tell it wasn't—_something_ happened—but it's healed. There's no damage to the organs, and they didn't…stick anything in or take anything out. It's all right where it's supposed to be, doing what it's supposed to do. This is just…" He gestured at the rough stitchwork. "This is just muscle damage. It doesn't go any deeper than that. The blood is just from moving around and pulling on the stitches. Tore 'em open a little bit. Not your fault," he added, guessing what was going through Steve's mind. "You had to get him out of there. But he's…actually almost okay."

"Jim, somebody cut him open," Steve insisted. He swallowed hard. "A lot."

"I know," Jim said, feeling nauseous just thinking about it. "But they fixed it."

"Why would they do that?"

Jim just shook his head. He tugged Bucky's shirt back down, and Steve pulled a torn invisibility cloak out of his backpack to wrap around him—it was flickering blue and silver around the rip, but it would work to keep Bucky warm. They sat there for a little bit, Steve's eyes bouncing back and forth between the vanishing men and Bucky. He pulled a loaf of bread from the backpack and tore off a large chunk that Jim gladly accepted. They couldn't get Bucky to eat any.

When the last of the groups disappeared, Steve got to his feet, calling Dugan over and telling him and the watchmen to get out of here. It felt like they'd been sitting there forever, but Jim reckoned it had only been about thirty minutes. He knew other groups had been taking back unconscious wounded, but he knew why Steve hadn't sent Bucky on with one of them. If Bucky wasn't dying, then Steve wasn't going to let him out of his sight, and Steve wasn't going to leave until he was sure everyone had made it out.

"Hey, Jim?" he asked as Dugan's group started disappearing.

"Yeah?"

"I, uh, I don't know how to apparate."

Maybe he shouldn't have, but for some reason, Jim thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He couldn't stop the surprised burst of laughter. Steve blushed a little but laughed too. That was just too good. Steve had just busted in all huge and magic and singlehandedly saved four hundred people from a bunch of dark wizards, and he couldn't apparate. Jim chuckled. "No sweat, man." Considering all Steve had just accomplished, it was the least Jim could do. "I can do side-along. You hold on to him," he said, nodding at Bucky.

Steve carefully got Bucky off the ground. Bucky was back to blinking and not reacting to anything. Steve got him on his feet and held him against his chest, tucking Bucky's head gently in under his chin and wrapping a protective hand up over the back of it. He nodded at Jim, and Jim came and stood on the other side of Bucky, sandwiching him between them as he wrapped his arms around him and Steve—it was a weird position, but he had to have hold of both of them, and the steadier they could keep Bucky, the easier the spinning would be on him. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Steve nodded. He smiled down at Jim. (And that was weird, Steve Rogers smiling _down_ at anybody.) "Thanks."

Jim smiled. "Thank _you_."

* * *

.


	30. The Long Wait

_So, I was just gonna leave it at the rescue mission until Friday, but you've all been waiting so long, I decided to stick one of the recovery chapters on here. Enjoy!  
_

* * *

Steve was sitting in a chair in the corner of the infirmary, keeping watch over the bed farthest from the door. It felt like days since they'd arrived back in Hogsmeade, but it had really only been about four hours.

It was nearly midnight, and Steve had finally been released from his debrief with Professor Phillips. Well, debrief-slash-dressing down. By the time he and Bucky and Jim had arrived in Hogsmeade, Phillips and the rest of the SSR had commandeered The Three Broomsticks, The Hog's Head and both inns, and were in full-scale rescue and response mode. The three of them arrived and Phillips had looked like he was torn between wanting to murder Steve on the spot and wanting to give him a hug. Steve had found both prospects equally frightening. The place was swarming with Healers, two of whom took Bucky and Jim, and Steve was sent off with an SSR medic to be checked over. He'd gotten some food, he'd gotten a shower, and someone had found him something that fit that wasn't a Hydra uniform to wear. Then Phillips had dragged him into the business office of the Hog's Head which was functioning as his office for the moment, and Steve was made to give a detailed account of everything he'd done since jumping out of the plane to Phillips, Stark, Peggy, and two Aurors he didn't know. (Howard was delighted to receive the mysterious little gadget that Steve had swiped, and had to be physically restrained by Phillips to keep him from leaving before the briefing was over to investigate it.) Afterwards, he'd been cleared to go back up to school. He was hoping Peggy could walk up with him so they could talk, but Phillips demanded her attention and she shot him an apologetic glance, so Steve had set off alone.

The castle was eerily quiet after the noise and commotion of Hogsmeade. It was weird to think that students were just asleep in their dorms, unaware of what was going on. He made his way up to the infirmary, where he'd heard that the more serious medical cases had been sent—some of the prisoners in better shape were given rooms in the inns or pallets on floors and had Healers checking them over, and Healers had come in from St. Mungo's to keep the seriously wounded from needing to travel any farther. He waited outside the door and found himself yelling at the Healer who refused to let him in, then blushing and apologizing when Nurse Rains appeared and shooed the Healer away and told Steve of course he could come in, but not if he was going to keep yelling and disturbing everybody.

Bucky's bed was in the back. Steve got the feeling it meant he was going to be there for a while.

He got the full rundown from the Healer who'd taken his case—or as full of one as they had at the moment, anyway—and didn't think he'd been sitting down long when Nurse Rains came and told him there was someone waiting for him at the door. He sighed, hoping it wasn't Phillips, and realized just how tired he was as he dragged himself to his feet.

Becky was waiting at the door in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers, quivering with nervous energy. "Steve!" she exclaimed when he appeared, launching herself at him.

He smiled and hugged her back. "Hey," he greeted, straightening up and setting her back down on the ground. "What are you doing up?" He'd figured she'd be asleep—it being after midnight and all—and had hoped that when she woke up there'd be better news about Bucky that he could give her.

She gave him a _look_ that was usually reserved for her brother. "Like I was going to sleep waiting for you guys to come back. Is he here? Did you find him? Is he okay?"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down," he told her, putting his hands on her shoulders. "He's…" He wasn't really sure what to tell her.

Her eyes widened fearfully at his hesitation. "He's not…" She swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.

"No!" Steve hurried to assure her. "He's alive! I found him and I brought him back and he's alive." She sighed in relief. "He's just…" Steve sighed. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Becky, he's in pretty rough shape right now."

A little bit of the fear came back to her eyes, but she set her jaw and nodded for him to go on.

"I don't…I don't know what they did to him," Steve admitted. "And the Healers are still trying to figure it out."

"Can't they ask him?" Becky asked nervously.

Steve shook his head. "He's not, well, he's not talking right now. It's like he…" Steve trailed off, trying to find the right words for it. "It's like he went off somewhere inside his head, and he hasn't come back yet. He's not talking, and I don't think he knows where he is or who's around."

Becky's eyes grew wider and watery as she listened to Steve, and Steve grimaced. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not trying to scare you. There's Healers here, and they're gonna figure out what's wrong and they're gonna fix it. He'll be okay, he's just…He's just not right now." He was praying that that was true.

Becky didn't look at him for a moment, pulling in several slow deep breaths and taking a minute to compose herself. "Okay," she nodded. She looked up, eyes still watery, though no tears fell. "Can I see him?"

Steve smiled and nodded. "Sure. Come on in." He put an arm over her shoulder and guided her through the doors and down to the end of the ward.

Bucky was right where he had left him, looking the same as he had all night. Still too pale, even in the soft, warm light of the room, with dark circles around his eyes, and his cheekbones and collar bones looking sharper than they should. He was under a couple of blankets, but still shivering slightly. Thankfully, they'd gotten him clean clothes and cleaned off all the blood, but the cuts and bruises that had been hidden underneath it were visible now, standing out in sharp reds and deep purples on his pale skin. His eyes were still open, empty and lost and blinking languidly as he stared at nothing in particular.

Steve felt Becky's breath hitch as she came to an abrupt halt two feet away from the bed. She stared at her brother for a long minute before cautiously making her way to the side of bed and sitting down. Steve dropped quietly into the chair next to her.

She was watching him intently. Bucky did not appear to have noticed either one of them. Becky lifted a hesitant hand, then pulled it back. "Can I touch him?" she whispered.

Steve nodded. "You can try. He doesn't always like that." Bucky had been happy enough to cling to Steve when he'd been ever-so-briefly lucid, but Steve had noticed the flinches when he and Jim had touched him later, and when the Healers had taken him away. He tried not to think about what Hydra could have done to make him so skittish—the thought made him angrier than he had been in a long time, and there was no one for him to punch.

"Jay?" Becky said uncertainly. She reached out carefully, gently resting her fingers on Bucky's hand. Bucky's expression didn't change, but his breath hitched and he pulled his hand away with a clumsy jerk, bringing it up to rest on his chest. Becky's face screwed up like she was going to cry, but she pulled her hand back and sat back in her chair. "What happened?" she asked softly.

As best he knew, Steve told her. He told her what he'd heard from Jim, about how they'd gotten captured and made to work, and then Bucky getting sick. He told her about finding him and getting him out, and she seemed to draw a little hope from the fact that Bucky had been awake and speaking, however briefly. Steve did try to tone the story down a little—Becky wasn't stupid, she knew what kind of stuff could happen to a prisoner of war, but she was also eleven, and this was her big brother.

A Healer came by a little while later, and for the first time, they got a little bit of a reaction out of Bucky, but it was the same as when Jim had tried to look at the cuts on his stomach. The Healer had a potion he wanted Bucky to drink, but Bucky wouldn't take it. He whimpered and turned his head away, and managed enough coordination in his arm to swat the Healer's hand away, sending the vial to floor where it shattered. He calmed down as the Healer moved away, going back to staring at the ceiling.

The Healer sighed, waving his wand and Vanishing the potion and shattered glass. "Do you want me to help you get him to drink it?" Steve asked uncertainly. He'd didn't much like the idea of forcing Bucky to drink anything—especially since he knew he'd gotten enough of that from Hydra—but if this was something he needed to get better…

The Healer shook his head. "No. I don't think forcing him in the state he's in is a good idea." Steve nodded, relieved. "It would be easier if he drank it, but we have other options—Muggle methods aren't effective as quickly as ours, but they'll work well enough." One of his coworkers was already approaching, rolling an IV stand along the floor. They swiftly set it up next to the bed, hanging a bag of bright blue potion from the hook, and carefully inserted the needle into the back of Bucky's hand, which only seemed to bother him as long as they were touching him. The Healer checked the line, and seemed pleased with how it was working. "This should start to undo some of the layers of magic."

The Healer leaned over and pulled the blanket down, carefully pulling up Bucky's shirt to check on his stitches. Steve was surprised to see them gone and the lines marking where they'd been shiny and old-looking. The Healer must have caught his expression, because he straightened up and smiled. "This part will heal up just fine. In fact, once we're finished with the dittany, the scars will be gone too."

"What did they do?" Steve asked. He and Jim hadn't been able to figure it out.

The Healer glanced uncertainly at Becky, who was listening with rapt attention, then shrugged. "It was some sort of surgery. The Muggle kind of surgery, with knives and scalpels and stitches and everything. However, there are traces of an unfamiliar healing potion. Whatever was done, it was healed and is back to normal. The potion seemed to be working its way from the inside out, so it hadn't gotten to the muscle and skin yet. Of course, we were able to fix that with the wave of a wand, and the scarring will clear up in a day or two. He'll be fine."

"All of him?" asked Becky timidly, shooting a quick look up at his face.

The Healer took a little longer in answering this time, focusing on pulling Bucky's blankets back up and readjusting them, but finally nodded cautiously. "I think so. I'm sorry, I don't want to promise anything this early, but I believe once the spells and potions wear off, he should begin to return to normal."

"Why do you have to wait? Why can't you just remove them?" Steve wondered.

"Because we don't know what they are," the Healer said bluntly. "A lot of this is experimental magic, and though it is starting to wear off, the way the different types of magic are interacting with each other, it's safer not to try lifting them off just yet. This potion is helping to pry them apart, and in the morning, we should be able to get a clearer picture of what we need to do."

"Why is he just…_staring_?" Becky asked. "I mean, I know he's…sick and everything, but why is he awake?" Steve looked up at the Healer, curious to know the answer too. He'd been expecting Bucky to pass out for hours now.

"There's a spell that's keeping him conscious," the Healer replied. "It's been applied several times over the past few days and it's too intertwined with the other spells to remove, which has increased its potency and is making it take longer to wear off than it should. Some of the other potions and spells are having a significant effect on his lack of coherency, but part of it is simply that he hasn't been allowed to sleep for almost a week and is exhausted." If Becky's face looked anything like Steve imagined his did at the moment, it was little wonder the Healer rushed on to assure them. "It _is_ wearing off," he told them. "He's going to be very tired for a long time after it does, but it will wear off."

Steve nodded his thanks, wishing there had been better news but figuring this was as good as they were going to get right now. The Healer left, and Becky scooted her chair over so she could lean on Steve. Her eyes stayed firmly on her brother. "Why would someone do this?" she whispered.

Steve shook his head, and moved his arm to wrap it around her, tugging her closer against his side. "I don't know."

"He _is_ going to get better, though, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Steve said, more confidently than he felt. The Healer had been too cautious in his predictions for Steve's liking. "The doc said so. It's just going to take a little while."

She nodded, and didn't say anything for long enough that Steve thought she might have fallen asleep. "I'm glad you found him," she said softly. "Thanks for going after him." She tilted her head up, blinking sad eyes at him, but she smiled. "And thanks for coming back in one piece."

* * *

Steve dozed off a couple of times throughout the remainder of the night. The chair was uncomfortable, but he was tired enough, he didn't think it mattered. He was too worried about Bucky to get any real kind of rest, though, jolting awake whenever Bucky moved or made a sound.

Bucky, for his part, had remained largely unchanged all night. His eyes were still alarmingly empty, though sometimes they roamed around the room, his mouth hanging partially open as his eyes followed something only he could see. Sometimes he would jerk abruptly on the bed, or one of his hands would start twitching, like it was trying to do something but couldn't figure out what. He made very little noise—his mouth would sometimes move soundlessly, as if it had forgotten how to speak, occasionally making faint, unintelligible muttering sounds.

Steve was just starting to drift off again around sunrise when Bucky's breathing changed. It started coming in short, sharp gasps, and Steve looked over to see that Bucky's eyes were still far away, but they were focused on _something_ and whatever it was scared him. Soft, sad little whimpers started coming out between the bursts of air.

"Bucky?" he asked carefully. Becky was watching worriedly. The frightened little noises Bucky was making got louder. "Buck?"

Bucky's arms clumsily tried and failed to push himself up the mattress, away from whatever it was he was looking at. He moaned and shook his head, and then all of a sudden he lurched upright, curling in against his knees and twisting his hands in his hair and screaming bloody murder.

"Bucky!" Steve called. His friend didn't react to his voice, but Steve put his hands on Bucky's shoulders and Bucky latched onto Steve's arm with both of his like a drowning man. Steve was out of his chair and on the bed in a heartbeat, wrapping his arms around Bucky and pulling him in tight against his chest. Bucky kept screaming, though it was somewhat muffled now as he screamed into Steve's shoulder. "Ssh, it's okay," he soothed. "It's okay, Bucky, I've got you, it's okay. It's okay. You're okay." Almost subconsciously, he started rocking back and forth, continuing to whisper assurances.

Bucky kept screaming until he seemed to run out of breath, then stopped with an abrupt choking noise and started sobbing into Steve's shirt. Steve adjusted his grip, pulling one hand up to cradle his head and make sure he was holding him securely, and kept rocking. He didn't know what else to do, and before he realized he was doing it, he'd started singing softly.

The words were just coming out, and it took him another second to realize they were the words to the song his ma always sang to him when he was sick. It was a short song, and it ended before he figured out why he was doing it, but he noticed that, while Bucky was still sobbing, he'd stopped shaking, so Steve started it again. "Gille beag ò, gille lag ò, gille beag ò nan caorach," he sang softly. "Gille beag ò, gille lag ò, gille beag ò nan caorach." The line repeated, and Bucky was crying a little quieter, almost like he was trying to listen. Steve swallowed and kept going. "Gille nan caorachan, gille nan caorachan." Almost all the Gaelic Steve knew was from the songs his ma used to sing—this one was about a little shepherd boy, and though Steve didn't think Bucky would appreciate the part that translated as 'weak little boy', it was the only song Steve could think of, and it really did seem to be calming him down. "Gille nan caorachan, gaolach thu," he finished softly.

He sang it one more time, and by the end, Bucky was quiet. His face was still buried in Steve's chest, and his head lolled on his neck as Steve pulled him gently back. For a few brief seconds, he dared to hope that Bucky had finally fallen asleep, but when he ducked down to look at him, his eyes were still open, red and weary from crying, but just as empty as before. Steve grimaced, but moved his hand to hold Bucky's head up and carefully lowered him back down until he was laying on the pillow. He put a hand briefly to the side of his head and then pulled away, noticing for the first time the Healer and Nurse Rains standing there. Of course they would have come running when Bucky started to scream.

Nurse Rains was smiling sadly at him, and the Healer nodded. "Well done," he said softly. He moved in closer to examine him and Steve sat back out of his way.

He turned to look at Becky, and she had one hand up over her mouth, staring at Bucky in horror as the tears she hadn't allowed to fall all night came streaming down her face. Steve held out his arms and she fell into them, crying against his chest just as her brother had done. Steve rested his head on top of hers and closed his eyes with a sigh. For both of them, all their lives, Bucky had been their rock. Safe and strong and unshakeable. They knew he got scared, and they knew he got sad, and that was okay—they didn't think any less of him for that—but this was…This was different. It was painful, it was physically painful, to see him so…broken, and not be able to do anything but watch. If Becky didn't need someone to hold on to her, Steve would have been crying too.

"Steve, what did they do to him?" she asked, her voice soft and afraid.

He hugged her tighter and kissed the top of her head. "I don't know," he whispered. Something awful. Rage was churning in Steve's stomach, and once Bucky was better, Steve was going to tear Hydra apart. Because whatever happened to Bucky shouldn't have happened to anyone. But especially not to him. "But he's going to be okay." Maybe if he said it enough, he would believe it. "He will."

It was several hours later—well into mid-morning—when Steve started to believe that Bucky really might be okay. After the screaming incident, Bucky had gone back to staring at the ceiling and his occasional muttering. Steve kept drifting off, as did Becky, and when Steve woke up this time, his head was hanging off the back of the chair and it took him a minute to work the crick out of his neck. He froze in the middle of rolling his neck around as his eyes landed on Bucky's bed and what was happening.

Becky was leaning forward, laying her head on folded arms on Bucky's mattress, and from this angle, Steve couldn't tell if she was asleep or not. Bucky's hand was moving, not twitching aimlessly like it had earlier, but slowly working its way across the blanket toward her. His hand met hers and awkwardly but determinedly closed over her outstretched fingers.

Becky's head flew upright like a shot, her eyes wide as she stared at her brother. Steve's eyes were wide too, and he was holding his breath, afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment. Because Bucky was looking at Becky, his eyes exhausted and sick and confused but very much James Buchanan Barnes again. "Hey," he breathed.

Becky looked like she'd forgotten how to breathe. "Jay?" she whispered. She blinked rapidly, her eyes filling with tears.

Bucky stared at her, still exhausted and sick and confused, but concerned now too. "Wha's th' matter, Munchkin?" he asked. She really started crying then, and he tugged weakly on the hand he was still holding. "C'mere," he said, and she fell against his chest, crying happily. "S'okay," he told her, pulling up one uncoordinated arm over her back in a weak hug.

She pushed herself up so she could look at him, careful not to dislodge his arm. "You're back," she said with a watery smile.

"M'back," he agreed. "Not really sure where I was, but 'm here now." She leaned forward again and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly. Bucky's eyes drifted over to the side and he saw Steve and smiled. The hand that was resting on Becky's back waved clumsily to beckon him over. Steve moved over and Bucky grabbed the end of his sleeve, pulling him down into the hug with them. "Thank you," he whispered.

* * *

_I'd encourage you to google the lullaby Steve sings and listen to someone singing it-it's a really pretty song. _

_Hope you guys enjoyed this one! After all this angst, there's some good recovery chapters on the way, with nice family stuff and Steve taking care of Bucky for a while. See you Friday!_


	31. Drifting Slowly Home

_Bucky's back now, and it's time for the poor little fella to get some love.  
_

* * *

Since coming back from wherever he'd been, mostly all Bucky had done was sleep, which could hardly be called exciting, but it was one of the best things Steve had ever seen. Becky had been sent off by Nurse Rains to Ravenclaw Tower under strict instructions to get some sleep herself and with the promise that she could come back and see her brother as soon as she did.

Bucky slept for the rest of the day, although he didn't always stay asleep for very long. Whether it was nightmares or part of the magic that was still flowing through his body, he would very suddenly jolt himself awake, breathing hard and staring nervously around the room. Though it usually didn't take him long to fall asleep again, for the brief periods he was awake, he wasn't always all there. He certainly wasn't gone like he was before—sometimes he was just a really tired version of his old self, but sometimes he could recognize that it was Steve sitting next to him and not much else. The Healer assured Steve that drifting in and out of clarity like that was to be expected with the magic that was still inside him, but now that they had a better idea of what it was, a plan of treatment, and he was getting sleep, it would stop before too long.

Steve found it easier to sleep now that Bucky was actually sleeping again, and he found it more comfortable to do so with Becky's chair free, since he could prop his feet up in hers, lean his chair back on its back legs, and rest his head against the wall. He also moved the chairs closer to the bed so he could lower one arm and wrap his hand around Bucky's forearm. Bucky seemed to be able to stay asleep a little longer if Steve was touching him.

Right now, they were both awake. Bucky was having one of his less-lucid periods of wakefulness—he didn't seem sure of where he was, and he hadn't said anything, but he was sitting up and leaning against Steve's side as he sat on the bed next to him, and he seemed steady enough. The Healer had brought over some more potion and thought Bucky might be ready to try drinking it—the IV was working fine, but the potion would work faster if he could drink it. Steve had taken the glass full of the silvery liquid and said he'd try, and he recognized the contents as the healing potion he'd helped Professor Erskine develop. He felt a pang of sadness as he thought of his teacher, followed quickly by one of relief and one of nervousness—relief that he'd been able to help make something that was going to help Bucky, and nervousness as he hoped it would do what it was supposed to do.

At the moment, though, he wasn't having a lot of luck. Bucky had shied away from Steve as soon as he'd brought the glass into view, letting out another one of those soft little whimpers that Steve had really been hoping he'd never hear Bucky make again. He set the glass back on the table by the bed. "Bucky?" he asked. "Bucky, hey, look at me, it's okay." He held up his hands to show there was nothing in them. "It's okay." He looked into Bucky's worried eyes. "Do you recognize me?" he asked. Bucky had every time he'd been awake so far, but Steve still sighed in relief when he nodded his head. "That's right," Steve replied, as if he had spoken aloud. "It's me, it's Steve. And I'm not gonna hurt you. You know that, right? I would _never_ hurt you." Bucky nodded again.

Slowly, Steve picked up the cup again. "I know that they hurt you," he said sadly. "And I know they gave you a lot of stuff that looked like this that hurt you too. But you're safe now. Now you're with me. I'm giving you this, and that means it's not gonna hurt you. This is gonna help you feel better. You don't have to drink it, and if you don't want to, I won't make you, but do you think you could give it a try? For me?"

He smiled, and Bucky looked at him for a long minute, then nodded slowly, reaching up a trembling hand to take the cup. Steve's smile widened, and he hovered one hand near the bottom of the glass as Bucky slowly drank all of it. "There you go," he said encouragingly. Bucky's hand gave out before he could put the glass down, but Steve caught it and set it back on the table. "There you go," he said again. Bucky was starting to blink sleepily, and Steve looped an arm across his back and, just as Bucky had done for him countless times before, he pulled him in against his side, resting his head on his shoulder.

Bucky's eyelids were starting to droop, but he caught himself before they closed, snapping them open with a sharp intake of breath. Steve wondered what he saw when he closed his eyes. "It's okay," he told him. He shifted a little, leaning back against the wall behind the bed. Bucky moved with him. "You can go to sleep if you want," he told him. Bucky tilted his head to blink up at him, looking tired and scared and all of five years old. "I'll be right here," Steve assured him, smiling warmly. "I got you, Buck."

A tiny smile tugged up one corner of Bucky's mouth and he nodded, even as his eyelids started to drop again. He nestled his head a little more comfortably against Steve's shoulder and was out before Steve got the blanket pulled up over him.

Steve smiled and pulled his arm in a little closer and leaned his head back. He let his mind wander for a little while. It was hard to imagine that three days ago, everything had been so different. He'd been worried and tiny, Erskine had been alive, and Bucky and all the rest of them were missing. Now he was, well, okay, he was still pretty worried—albeit about different things, but he had this giant new body he was still getting used to, Erskine was gone and Bucky was back. Bucky muttered something in his sleep, and Steve rubbed a hand up and down his arm.

"Hello, Steve."

He looked up to see Peggy standing at the foot of the bed. He smiled. "Hey, Peggy." She smiled back and slipped into Becky's chair. "I take it that since you're sitting down, you're not here to tell me Professor Phillips wants me again?"

Her smile widened. "No. He's definitely going to want to talk to you some more, but he's got a lot of other things to worry about right now, and you're not really going anywhere." Steve nodded. He imagined trying to get all the soldiers—wizards and otherwise—back to where they came from was something of a logistical nightmare. "How's he doing?" she asked, nodding at Bucky.

Steve looked down at him quickly, then back up at her. "I think he's getting better. He's not sleeping so good, though" he added.

Peggy nodded in understanding. "I would imagine so." She nodded her head back toward the door. "I've been hearing…Well, I've heard some of what went on in there." She shook her head.

Steve looked back down at Bucky. "When I found him, he was…" He bit his lip and shook his head. He'd thrown up when he'd first seen Bucky in that room and how awful he looked, but that had really been his only chance to react to it so far. He'd been busy after that getting him and everyone else home, and then there was Becky to comfort and Bucky to stay calm for…He choked down the sudden urge to cry, blinking away tears that had sprung to his eyes. "They tortured him, Peggy," he said softly, voice wavering. He knew that, but it still hurt to put it into words. "They experimented on him. They, they cut him open and sewed him back together, and the Healers still don't know what all this magic is they put in him, and, and—" He choked down a sob rising in his throat and sniffed and looked away, feeling heat rising in his cheeks as he blinked rapidly to clear his watery eyes.

He looked up at the touch of Peggy's hand on his arm. He didn't see any judgement for his tears on her face, only concern, compassion, and understanding. "He's going to be alright, Steve," she said firmly.

Steve swallowed hard. "How do you know that?" he asked quietly. He could be confident when Becky was here because she needed someone to be, or when Bucky was awake because he was afraid and he needed something solid, but he couldn't keep it going when it was just him and Bucky was right here next to him, so fragile and sick and lost. "What if he's not?"

Peggy squeezed his arm. "He's going to be okay," she said again. "And do you know why?" Steve shook his head, and Peggy smiled warmly. "Because you're not going to let him be anything else. You're going to push on with this like you push on with everything else, and if it turns out these Healers can't help him, you're not going to stop until you find someone that can." Her smile widened. "That's how I know he's going to be okay. Because you're the one looking after him."

* * *

According to Steve, he'd brought Bucky back to Hogwarts Friday night, and now it was Sunday afternoon. Bucky was just taking his word for it—it was really hard to keep track of time with as often as he kept falling asleep. He didn't think he'd ever been this tired in his whole life. Steve told him what the Healer had said about Hydra's magic keeping him from sleeping while he was there, and he thought he might have remembered that—despite how clear his nightmares seemed to be, most of his waking memories of what happened after he'd gotten sick were pretty blurry. He supposed that was what came of being drugged to the gills by evil scientists and not allowed to sleep for a week.

Ironically, considering how much Zola seemed to like hearing himself talk, he hadn't been particularly clear on what he was actually _doing_ to Bucky. Bucky could feel a lot of whatever it was still inside him, and it felt wrong, but the Healer kept saying it was wearing off. Bucky supposed he was right—he still felt wrong and sick, but it seemed like it was a little less each time he woke up.

Each time he woke up, Steve was there, and even though it made Bucky feel about five years old, he was really glad he was. Steve was really big now, and Bucky had a vague recollection of the reason why being explained to him, but he couldn't remember right now and he didn't want to ask. The wrongness he kept feeling often extended up into his brain, and everything would go out of focus and weird. He _did_ remember the Healer saying that was normal and would stop once the magic all wore off and he got some more sleep, so he figured he would wait and see if Steve kept being big before he asked about it again. If it turned out Steve was tiny like he was supposed to be, he didn't want to worry Steve by letting him know he was seeing things.

Right now, Bucky was awake, and he was trying to stay that way. He knew he needed to sleep—and he really _wanted_ to sleep—but he didn't like the kinds of things he saw when he closed his eyes. A welcome distraction appeared in the form of Gabriel Jones. Gabe was looking a little haggard, but much better overall than last time Bucky had seen him. "Hey, guys," he greeted, smiling as he approached the bed. "It's good to see you awake, man," he said, grinning at Bucky.

Bucky smiled. "Thanks," he said. "It's good to see you too. How you doin'?"

Gabe chuckled and nodded. "I'm good. Docs got me all fixed up. What about you?"

Bucky considered, wasn't sure what to say, so decided on, "I'm makin' it."

Gabe nodded again. "You'll get there," he said encouragingly. He looked over at Steve. "What about you? I'm guessing Phillips didn't murder you."

Steve laughed. "No. Kinda looked like he wanted to for a minute, but…" He shrugged.

Gabe chuckled. "Well, you had a hell of a peace offering."

Bucky frowned. He was missing something. "Why was Phillips going to kill you?" Steve blushed, and Bucky got the feeling he wasn't going to like this story. "What did you do?"

Gabe laughed and Steve got redder. "I know better than to get in the middle of Bucky yelling at Steve, so I'm gonna go. Before I do, though." He looked at Bucky and smiled. "I brought you something." He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, and Bucky's mouth dropped open.

"My wand," he breathed.

Gabe nodded. "Jacques found 'em all in a lockbox in the weapons room while we were busting out of there." Bucky had heard pieces of that story. He'd get the rest later.

"Are you sure this one's his?" Steve asked.

Gabe nodded. "Cherry and phoenix feather. Phillips got a bunch of wandmakers in to help sort 'em out—Hazelthorpe, Ollivander, Gregorovitch, Delacroix—they're all here." He held out the wand. "It's yours, man."

Bucky reached up a shaking hand—his muscles mostly moved where he wanted them to now, but he hadn't been able to get them to stop shaking yet—wrapping his fingers around the slender stick of wood. For a moment, he was eleven years old again and Mrs. Hazelthorpe's shop was glowing with soft, yellow light, warmth rushing through his body as he held his wand for the first time. He swallowed down a tightness in his throat. He'd thought he would never see it again. "Thank you," he whispered.

Gabe nodded. "You're welcome. Hey, now that you're up, the other guys are going to want to come by. We all made it out," he said, anticipating Bucky's question (one that he was pretty sure Steve had answered before). "Some of 'em are still a little beat up, but they'll wanna see you."

Bucky nodded. He wanted to see them too.

Gabe waved and walked away, and Bucky stared at his wand a moment longer before setting it carefully on the bedside table. "Okay," he said, settling back against his pillows. He didn't think he could sit up much longer. "Why does Gabe think I'm gonna yell at you?"

"What?" Steve asked, far too innocently.

Bucky glared. "I may not be so much with remembering things right now, but it's been, like, two minutes. My eggs aren't _that_ scrambled. Start talking, punk."

"Well," Steve started awkwardly. "Phillips wasn't so big on the whole 'me going on this rescue mission' thing."

"Uh huh." Bucky could buy that. Phillips had never had an overwhelming amount of faith in Steve. "And you _were_ actually there," he clarified. People had talked about it, and he had images of Steve being there. Steve was big and things were on fire. (So, probably, Steve actually _was_ big now. For some reason.)

"I was," Steve confirmed. Something in his eyes made Bucky wonder if he'd asked that already.

"So, Phillips is mad because you went anyway?" Bucky guessed. All things considered, that was a very Steve thing to do. He would think Phillips would have seen that coming.

Steve nodded and didn't look sure where to go from there.

"What?" Bucky asked. "There's gotta be more to it for Phillips to want to kill you than just you sneaking off to join the rescue mission."

Steve was blushing again. "Well, that's the thing. There wasn't exactly a rescue mission."

"Then what was there exactly?"

Steve was getting awfully fidgety. "There was Phillips saying it was too dangerous to send anyone in after you guys and we had to wait. Then there was Peggy convincing Howard Stark to 'borrow' one of the SSR's planes. And then me jumping out of it and…sneaking into the factory after dark."

Bucky stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what he was supposed to get from that information. Once it clicked, his eyes went wide and Steve looked down at the floor. "You…" He swallowed. "You broke into that factory _by yourself_?"

Steve still wasn't looking up, but he nodded. "I had to. Once I knew where to find you, I couldn't leave you there," he said softly.

Bucky realized his mouth was hanging open and he snapped it shut. No wonder Phillips wanted to murder him. Come to that, Bucky kind of did too. Steve had done some moronic things in his time in his quest to save everybody, but this really took the cake.

"Come here," Bucky said.

Steve looked up, confused. "What?"

"Come. Here."

"Why?" Steve asked warily.

Bucky sighed. "Because I don't think I can sit up any farther." He beckoned with one hand. "Get over here."

Cautiously, like he was waiting for Bucky to hit him, Steve got off of his chair and shifted to sit on the edge of Bucky's mattress. Bucky grabbed onto Steve's sleeve and pulled himself up, then wrapped his arms around him. "You're an idiot," he told a stunned Steve, who clearly had not expected to be hugged. "A complete, absolute _idiot_," he said, reaching up one hand to smack him on the back of the head to emphasize his point before going back to hugging him. "I don't know what in the world possessed you to do something so stupid, but…" He swallowed hard and hugged him as tightly as his shaking muscles would allow. "_Thank you_."

The waver in Bucky's voice seemed to snap Steve out of his surprise, and he pulled his arms up and hugged Bucky back. They sat there for a long time, and if Steve felt the tears trickling out of Bucky's eyes and soaking through his shirt, he didn't say anything. Steve had done a really stupid, incredibly brave thing because it had needed to be done and no one else was gonna do it. He'd always known the possibility of getting hurt was never gonna hold Steve back, but…Normally, Bucky would have been furious with Steve for putting himself in that kind of danger, and okay, yeah, he was, but washing away that anger was an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Steve could have gotten himself killed, and he'd done it to save Bucky. Bucky, who would have died a slow and awful death if Steve had listened when Phillips had told him to stay, or when the other guys told him Bucky was probably dead. "You didn't give up on me," Bucky said softly.

"What?" Steve asked, taking Bucky's shoulders and pulling him back a little to look at him.

"You didn't give up on me," Bucky repeated, now that his voice wasn't muffled in Steve's shirt.

Steve huffed a laugh as if Bucky had said something ridiculous. "Of course I didn't."

"No," Bucky said, shaking his head. Steve didn't get it. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Everyone else did—Phillips and the other guys…I'm not mad at them for it," he added truthfully. "It made sense. Hell, _I_ gave up on me." He sniffed and wiped his nose again. "But you didn't."

Steve smiled warmly and pulled one of his hands up off Bucky's shoulder to cup the back of his head. "And I never will. You can't ever go so far I won't come after you. I'm with you to the end of the line, pal."

Something warm expanded happily in Bucky's chest and he smiled. A memory flashed through his head and he huffed a watery laugh.

"What?" Steve asked.

"You remember First Year?" Bucky asked. "Our first night here. The Hat put me in Hufflepuff and it said…" He swallowed down a catch in his throat. "It said loyalty was gonna save my life." He looked up gratefully at Steve. "It was right."

* * *

Winnifred Barnes stopped at the top of the stairs to catch her breath. It was quite a walk from Hogsmeade up to the castle, followed by nine flights of stairs up to the infirmary. She had made the journey quicker than she probably should have, considering that she wasn't as young as she used to be, and she took a minute to compose herself before going in.

Bucky's unit had been missing for three weeks, and she'd been beside herself with worry the longer it dragged on. When news finally came, it was hardly in the form she'd been expecting—a letter from Rebecca informed her that Steve had magically gotten bigger and had gone to rescue Bucky. Details had been somewhat confusing—or lacking entirely—and yes, the girl was eleven, but when she got her home, they were going to have to work on how to write a letter properly, because Winnifred _needed_ more information than that.

Not long after, a letter had come from Steve, telling her that Bucky was back, and he was alive and he was sick but he was recovering. There was no mention about whatever Rebecca had said about him being bigger, and very little on _how_ Bucky had come back. She was going to have to talk to him about letter-writing too. Almost as soon as she was done reading Steve's letter, another had come from the Ministry of Magic, and though it was longer than either Steve or Rebecca's letters, it said less. The gist, however, had been that her son was alive and they were in the process of arranging transportation for her to come to Britain. International magical travel was heavily monitored and complicated to set up, what with the war and everything, and when they'd told her she wouldn't be going anywhere until Monday afternoon, she'd thrown a frying pan out the window.

But she was here now. She drew in a calming breath, smoothed down her skirt, and opened the door to the infirmary. A nurse met her at the door and Winnifred produced the Ministry letter. "Of course, Mrs. Barnes," the other woman nodded. She handed the letter back and held out a hand for her to shake. "Gwyneth Rains. I'm the school nurse." Winnifred recognized the name—mostly in connection with stories about Steve. "I imagine you'll want to see him straight away. I can find a Healer to give you a full report a little later."

"Thank you," Winnifred said with a grateful smile. "Could you just fill me in a little?" she asked as they walked. Every bed they passed was full, and the ward felt still and sleepy. She felt as though she should keep her voice down. "Neither Steve or Rebecca went into much detail in their letters."

The nurse chuckled good-naturedly. "They have been rather preoccupied." Her smile fell away, replaced with a solemn, professional demeanor. "To put it briefly, your son and the other boys here were imprisoned at a labor camp. They were overworked and undernourished, and your son got very sick." Winnifred's breath caught in her throat as the nurse's professional mask slipped and looked suddenly sorrowful. "I'm afraid there's not an easy way to say this, but the Hydra scientists there…performed experiments on him, along with several others."

Winnifred's hand flew to her mouth and she stopped walking, frozen in horror. "Experiments?" she whispered. On human beings? On her little boy?

The other woman nodded sadly. "I'm so sorry. But the good news is, the Healers have been successful in breaking down the layers of magic that were placed on him and repairing the physical damage. It's going to take a little while, but they're expecting a full recovery."

"Really?" she asked, praying she'd heard her right. The nurse nodded, and she let out a shaky exhale of relief.

The nurse smiled at her, and they started walking again. "I will warn you," she began. "That he is exhausted right now. And he's on some rather powerful medication, both magical and not. I just want you to be aware of that so that you won't be alarmed if he doesn't always seem particularly lucid when he's awake. It's a side effect and it will pass."

"Thank you," Winnifred said, glad of the warning and the chance to prepare herself for whatever she was going to see. The nurse nodded and gestured toward the bed in the corner, and Winnifred's eyes first went to Rebecca and Steve sitting next to it. She hurried over.

"Mama!" Rebecca cried, hopping up from her seat with a smile and dashing over to hug her. She hugged her daughter, squeezing her tightly.

When Rebecca let her go, Steve was standing there, looking happy to see her but also nervous, as though he was unsure what her reaction would be. For a moment, it was simply to stare him in shock. She could see Steve Rogers still in his face and especially those eyes of his (and for a moment she fought down the urge to laugh at the absurd thought that he had finally grown into his eyebrows), but the tiny little body was gone, and he stood taller and broader than Bucky or even George would. But he was still that fifteen-year-old boy she knew so well, and she smiled and hugged him warmly, and she felt the tension she'd seen in his shoulders drain away.

Steve moved to the side so she could see Bucky, and then he was catching her and guiding her to the chair he'd just vacated as her knees gave out. "Oh," she breathed, putting a hand to her chest. Her baby was laying there asleep, shivering slightly even under the blanket. He'd always been pale, but now he was positively ghostly, looking almost transparent against the white of the sheets. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and there was a faded bruise on his chin and a long cut running across his cheek, and they looked vibrant purple and stark crimson against his white skin. He was thin, thinner than he should have been after only three weeks, and his brow was furrowed as he slept uneasily.

"Oh, baby," she whispered sadly, laying one hand along the side of his face. Even though he was shivering, his skin was warm with a low fever.

His eyes fluttered open at her touch, and she held her breath as he blinked rapidly, clearing the sleep from his eyes. He stared at her flatly for several seconds, and a knot of panic formed in her throat as he didn't react. Then he rolled his head heavily away from her to look at Steve, who had sat down on the other side of the bed. She saw him raise a questioning eyebrow, and Steve nodded. "She's really here, man," he said softly. A knot twisted in her stomach as she realized what he'd been afraid of. What had they done to her boy?

He rolled his head back to look at her, and this time a tired smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. "Hey, Ma," he rasped.

"Hello, sweetheart," she replied, smiling and leaning down to hug him carefully, not sure where he was hurt. She felt one of his arms come up over her back clumsily but solidly to return the hug. She sat up so she could look at him again. He didn't look much better now that he was awake—a weariness hung over him now, an uncertainty as he looked around the room. She stroked his cheek gently. His eyes didn't look as young as they used to. There was a sadness there now, nestled deep in the stormy blue depths.

"Hey, don't cry, Ma," he told her as her smile fell from her face. "I'm gonna be okay."

She huffed a short, watery laugh at that. Her brave little grown-up boy, trying to make sure she was okay when he was the one who needed looking after. "I know you will, sweetie," she said. "I've just been so worried about you."

He nodded. "I know." A smile pulled up one side of his mouth. "I was worried about me too." That got the laugh out of her she knew he was looking for. "But I'm okay." He nodded back in Steve's direction. "Steve got me out."

She looked over to see Steve blushing. "Yes," she said, nodding. "I'd heard about that. Not that either letter I received had much detail in it."

Rebecca looked up at Steve. "You should tell her."

"It's a good story, Steve," Bucky said, shifting a little on his pillow.

Steve got a little redder, but he nodded. "Yeah, okay. First, though," he added, turning in his seat to pick up a vial and a handful of pills from the table beside him. "You need to take your medicine."

Bucky frowned. "I just did that."

Steve smirked. "You did that five hours ago. Then you fell asleep."

Bucky muttered something unintelligible that was probably insulting, but shifted again to take the medicine Steve was offering. Winnifred couldn't help smiling at that—he'd been grumpy about taking his medicine since he was two years old. He tossed back the pills then downed the silvery liquid in one gulp—she noticed that his hand shook slightly as he did—then handed the cup back to Steve.

"Alright," he said. He looked up at her. "S'a good story, Ma," he told her, slurring his words a little bit. "Go, Steve."

Steve frowned at the order but Bucky just smiled, and so, a little awkwardly at first, Steve started his story. It included multiple interruptions from Rebecca, and several questions from Bucky that became decreasingly coherent as his medication kicked in. Winnifred was glad Nurse Rains had warned her about that, as it would have been rather frightening otherwise. Steve seemed to take it in stride, however, and she realized he'd been here with Bucky this whole time that she hadn't been able to and knew what to expect. Warmth spread through her chest at the realization, though she supposed she shouldn't really have been surprised.

The patient tone with which Steve answered Bucky's questions told her this was neither the first time he'd told this story, nor the first time Bucky had asked some of the questions. She wondered how many times he'd done it, and how much Bucky retained through the retellings and if Steve would have to tell it again once Bucky's head was clear. (She really was trying not to worry about that.)

It was a fascinating story. Steve started at the beginning with the news that Bucky's unit had been found, going on up through his magical transformation and the rescue mission. If the result of it all hadn't been sitting right there in front of her, she would have had trouble believing it.

By the end of the story, Bucky had fallen asleep again. Steve had clearly been trying to downplay his heroics, always having been a modest boy, but what he had done to save her son was simply astounding. Winnifred got up, rounded the bed and pulled Steve to his feet and into another hug. "Thank you," she whispered, happy tears welling in her eyes. She kissed his cheek and pulled back to look at him. "Thank you for my son," she said. He looked a little taken aback at this outpouring of emotion, and she put her hands to his face, cupping his cheeks. "And thank you for coming home too," she said sincerely. "I couldn't've stood to lose either one of you."

* * *

.


	32. Up And Down

_Steve has an unexpected encounter, and Bucky gets cleared to go home.  
_

* * *

Now that Mrs. Barnes was here, Steve didn't feel so bad about leaving the infirmary. And a good thing too, since by Tuesday morning, most of the people who were being sent away had gotten sorted out and Phillips had some more time on his hands.

He ran through another debriefing with Steve, just in case there was anything they'd missed the first time around. Steve remembered to tell him about the map he'd seen with the locations of the other Hydra bases, and though he'd heard about Pensieves and memory extractions from Bucky, this was the first time he got to see one in action. Phillips made a copy of Steve's memory of the moment, then poured it into a stone bowl. Shimmering on the top of what looked like water was the map, just as Steve had seen it, but stationary enough to be studied at some length. "Wow," he breathed.

He spent a large part of the rest of the day being examined and tested by SSR medics. They'd looked him over pretty thoroughly after his initial transformation, so the medical side of the checkup was brief, but now they wanted to watch him do magic and test his endurance and make all sorts of measurements and recordings. Steve was feeling pretty drained by the time they were all done, but at least they hadn't taken any more of his blood.

"So, it looks like Erskine was right about you," Phillips mused. "You really were the perfect choice." He graced Steve with a very small but genuine smile. "If this thing of his was only going to work one time, he would have been glad it was you."

"Thank you, Sir," Steve said quietly, hoping he wasn't grinning like an idiot. He didn't think Phillips had ever approved of anything he'd done for four years, and now it sounded like he was actually _proud_ of him.

"Now," Phillips said, pulling out a sheaf of parchment from a pile on his desk and looking over it. "Let's talk a minute about next term."

"Next term, Sir?"

"Term's over at the end of the week. We're certainly not sending any of you out to do anything before that, and part of the arrangement with the Ministry was that you boys be allowed time with your families," he explained. "But after Christmas, we're picking this thing back up. I'm assuming you want to be part of the fight this time around?"

"Yes, Sir," Steve said quickly.

"Good." Phillips folded his hands together and looked across the desk at him. "How would you feel about working for me?"

"Sir?"

"The SSR conducts missions of its own. The Ministry is handling the fight with Grindelwald, and our focus is more on Hydra."

"Don't they work together, Sir?" Steve wondered.

Phillips shook his head. "In name only. Hydra's been slowly going rogue for some time, and the intel you brought back shows that they're getting more dangerous than we realized. You interested in helping take them down?"

"Yes, Sir," Steve said firmly, thinking of everything he knew Hydra had done.

"Good," Phillips said again. "We'll get started when you get back in January. That'll give us some time to get some more solid intel. We'll get you some real training, see what kind of team we can put together. You pulled off this solo mission thing surprisingly well, but we're never going to do that again." He raised what could only be interpreted as a threatening eyebrow, and Steve nodded.

Once he was done with Phillips, Steve decided to head by Hufflepuff and get a shower and a change of clothes. He had all of two outfits that fit him anymore, and the only clean shirt he had right now was the one that he'd torn on the back of the truck. He felt a surge of guilt at the realization that Mrs. Barnes was going to have to take him shopping when he got home—no more fitting into Bucky's hand-me-downs. He bent down to toss his dirty stuff into the corner of his closet to be magically collected by the house elves for laundry, then winced as he smacked his head on the inside of the doorframe standing back up. He rubbed his head. He hadn't realized he was tall enough to do that now.

Back in the infirmary, he stopped to check in with Jacques, who had a bed near the door. The rest of his friends had been fixed up and were back on their feet, but whatever had happened to Jacques' knee was taking a little longer to fix. He seemed cheerful enough, though—Rains had promised him he'd be out in the morning, and his cousin had gotten a new translator charm sent over that had arrived this morning. He was currently in the middle of one of the weirder conversations Steve had been witness to—Gabe and the skinny kid Steve recognized from their cage were sitting there, and the conversation seemed to be taking place in English, French, Russian, and some sort of pantomime.

It only got more confusing when Steve interrupted, but he finally gathered that the skinny kid's name was Ivan and he was from a wizarding school in Leningrad. Now that Jacques had the charm, he could understand what Ivan was saying in Russian, and he could pass that on to Gabe in French, but neither of them could actually speak Russian back to Ivan. (Although Gabe seemed to have a few phrases down—he had an ear for languages.) The pantomime seemed to consist mostly of gestures they seemed to find familiar—Steve guessed they'd worked something out over all their time in captivity together. Once it got communicated back to Ivan that, yes, this was the guy he'd seen that had let them all out, he was effusively thankful, so much so that Steve actually started to get a little embarrassed while Gabe and Jacques snickered.

Steve had almost made it all the way down the ward and back to Bucky's bed when he was stopped by a voice he had not been expecting and had not really wanted to hear. "Hey, Rogers!"

Steve stopped, drew in a breath, and slowly turned around. "Ethan," he said with a small nod. What could _he_ want?

It was weird being able to look down at Ethan Green, though comforting in its own way. He certainly wouldn't be getting knocked down by him again any time soon. Not that Ethan looked like he'd be up for knocking anybody down right now anyway. Steve had been vaguely aware that Ethan had been at the factory—he thought he remembered seeing him while he was helping Gabe set up groups for apparating home, but they hadn't spoken then. He was still looking pretty rough. He was standing on his own feet, but he had a hand wrapped around the frame of the nearest bed that was clearly keeping him balanced. The left side of his face was covered in deep purple bruising that had to have been magically inflicted to still look as bad as it did.

"Listen, um," Ethan started awkwardly, scratching at the back of his head with his free hand. He didn't seem able to look Steve in the eye. He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry."

Whatever Steve had been expecting, it hadn't been that. "For what?"

Ethan huffed a short laugh. "For, well, the past four years. I've been, well…I've been pretty awful to you, and I'm sorry."

"Oh." Huh. How about that?

"I know," Ethan continued. "It probably seems like I'm saying that just because you saved my life, but that's not it. Although, thank you for that, by the way."

"Sure," Steve nodded. Yeah, he didn't like him, but he wouldn't have left him there to die.

"Anyway, I…well…Blood's always been a thing with my family, you know?" Steve nodded. He'd gathered as much. "People who were pure-blood were just better than people who weren't," Ethan went on. "I mean, not in, like, the Grindelwald way, where it was okay to kill Mudbl—Muggle-borns," he corrected himself, much to Steve's surprise. (He still didn't like the word 'Muggle', but that was definitely a step up for Ethan.)

"But, you know, we were better, and I never saw anything wrong with that," Ethan continued. "But then my unit got caught. And I realized, well, for one thing, being pure-blood didn't seem to keep me any safer. But then, then I saw what they were doing to people. It's one thing, just hearing about it, but to actually _see_ it…And I realized I, the way I was thinking about people and putting them in these categories and things, I, well, I wasn't as far away from Hydra as I would have liked to think. And I…" He swallowed hard. "What I saw in there—I never want to be like them."

He finally looked at Steve. "I can't really ask you to forgive me," he said. "I probably don't deserve that after everything I've done to you, but…I want you to know that I'm sorry. I'm not going to bother you anymore, and I'm really…" He sighed. "I'm trying to change," he finished. "So, yeah. I just wanted to let you know." He nodded sharply and turned around to go.

"Ethan, wait," Steve said, swallowing down his momentary shock. Ethan stopped and turned back warily. Steve extended his hand, and after a moment, Ethan took it. That had taken guts. It was really hard to admit that you were wrong. "Thanks," he said. He didn't think they would ever be best friends or anything, but they didn't have to keep being enemies. "Clean slate?" he offered. Ethan gave him a small, relieved smile, and Steve smiled back. Ethan nodded, then turned and made his way back down the ward toward where Gabe was sitting for what Steve guessed was going to be another apology.

Bucky was awake and eyeing him suspiciously as he approached his bed. "What did that slimeball want?" he asked. His ma looked down at him in disapproval. "No," Bucky protested. "Ma, that guy has been nothing but awful to Steve since the day we got here. Do you know how many times Steve was up here because of him?!"

Steve smiled, glad to see some of Bucky's animation returning. "He wanted to apologize," he said, before Bucky could really get going on a rant.

Bucky stopped short, looking up at Steve in surprise. "What?"

Steve shrugged and sat down. "Apparently, getting caught by Hydra gave him a new perspective."

"Huh," Bucky mused. "Shoulda gotten him caught years ago."

Steve laughed and Mrs. Barnes chastised, "Bucky!"

"He really was pretty awful, Mrs. Barnes," Steve put in. He looked down at Bucky and shrugged again. "But he said he's gonna try not to be."

Bucky's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Alright," he said, not sounding entirely convinced. "I'm still not gonna like him, though."

Steve grinned. "Fair enough." He wasn't sure he'd get that far either.

The Healer came back over to check on Bucky then. The magic Hydra had cast on him was almost gone, and the scars across his stomach had vanished completely, which Steve was grateful for. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to see that reminder on your own skin every day. Initially, Bucky's Healer had thought it might take another week, but he was happy to declare that in a few more days the last of the potions should be out of his system and the last of the spells should have lifted. The Healer did warn them that he would still need some time to recover his strength and get over the lingering pneumonia, but he would be well enough to go home with Steve and Becky at the end of the week and get his rest there.

Though the Healers were confident he would be able to go home at the end of the week, he was still taking a lot of medication to make sure that happened—five different potions and two non-magical drugs, the combination of which tended to make him a little loopy. Now that the danger was behind them, however, it was more entertaining than worrying. Especially in moments like this. The Healer had topped off his meds, then pulled Mrs. Barnes aside to give her an update. Steve had lingered at what should have been out of earshot, but his hearing was much sharper than it used to be, so he listened with rapt attention. The medication had had time to kick in by the time they sat back down, and one of the first things Bucky did was reach over and poke Steve in the stomach through the hole in his shirt.

Steve looked down at the hole and then up at Bucky, who grinned. "You have a hole in your shirt," he informed him. He reached over and poked a finger through it again. "Poke," he said.

Steve chuckled and Mrs. Barnes was trying very hard not to as she reached over and wrapped her fingers around Bucky's wrist, pulling his hand back. "Stop poking Steve, dear," she said in a tone better suited to a five-year-old than a fifteen-year-old.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said compliantly, folding his hands together. He was quiet for a minute before reaching over and doing it one more time. "Poke," he whispered.

Steve started laughing and found he couldn't stop. He'd been so worried and afraid for almost a month now, and relief that everything was going to be okay and joy at having Bucky back and nearly back in one piece were flooding through his chest and washing everything else away. He kept laughing and nearly fell out of his chair.

* * *

Steve had gotten permission—given his role in the rescue mission and all—to be exempted from end of term exams along with the rest of the boys who'd been captured. Everyone who'd enlisted—while they'd been missing classes—had been gaining enough practical experience in spellwork to keep them all on track for the N.E.W.T. and O.W.L. exams at the end of the year.

Becky, on the other hand, had been granted no such exemption, and had been huffy and indignant about it all week. She was spending as much free time as she could in the infirmary with Steve and Bucky and her ma, but she still had classes and homework and curfews, and she found the whole thing exceedingly unfair. She also thought it was unfair that she and Steve were going to have to ride the train home, while Mrs. Barnes and Bucky would be taking a Portkey back to Brooklyn. Steve agreed with her on that one.

It made sense that Bucky would need to travel home magically, and a Portkey was much smoother than apparating that far. And it made sense that Mrs. Barnes should go with him, since he wasn't going to be particularly lucid or mobile when he got home. Steve and Becky, however, were considered extraneous passengers according to Regulation 394B of the Ministry of Wartime Magical Transportation. It made very little sense to Steve, seeing as it wouldn't require any extra fuel or magic or anything for him and Becky, but he was tired and it wasn't a hill he wanted to die on. He acted grumpy enough about it to let Becky know she wasn't alone in her feelings, which calmed her down, and they got on the train.

At least Steve could manage the luggage okay by himself now, but it was still weird going down to the train station and riding home without Bucky. He'd never been on the Hogwarts Express without Bucky before.

Though he'd told the story before, Steve had to give his version of what had happened again now that his friends were all present and conscious. Thanks to questions and clarifications and interruptions, it took until lunch to get through it all. Steve was getting tired of telling it, and he was definitely tired of being the center of attention. When he finally made it to the end, he quickly deflected the question back onto them, asking about what all had happened in the last month—and not just to get the spotlight off himself, he genuinely wanted to know. They took turns sharing their own versions of what had happened to them, and though Steve could tell they were trying to inject some humor into it and dodge some of the more traumatic stuff, he didn't mind. Some stuff, you just didn't want to tell everyone. He got that.

They all fell asleep toward the end of the ride, like they usually did. Steve slept less comfortably on the train than he was used to—he couldn't curl up in the seat anymore. Becky giggled as he rolled his neck around trying to work the kinks out of it. "That's what you get for getting taller than me," she declared, which got a laugh out of everyone. Jim managed to extricate himself from Esther's grip—she'd been stuck to him like a barnacle since Saturday—long enough to do something with his hands that Steve couldn't see that made his neck make an alarmingly loud cracking noise and then stop hurting.

Steve and Becky were a little surprised when they got off the train to find Mr. Kowalski waiting for them, though they supposed Mrs. Barnes wouldn't want to leave Bucky home by himself to come get them. Mr. Kowalski had evidently been informed of Steve's change in appearance—he looked surprised at first, but made no comment. They said goodbye to their friends, amid a chorus of Christmas greetings and well-wishes to take to Bucky.

Bucky was asleep when they got home—he'd been sleeping a _lot_ lately. The Healers had assured them that was normal, given how exhausted he was. Never mind that the medication made him sleepy too—all week, he'd never been awake for more than an hour at a time, and he had yet to be lucid for the whole hour. Steve knew he had taken the last of the medicine this morning, and he knew Bucky was glad get off of it. He'd confided to Steve the day before that, while he knew it was helping, feeling so out of it all the time made him feel like he was back in Zola's lab and made it harder to remember where he was.

Although he wasn't going to have to take any more of it (which Steve was glad about—it meant he was getting better), what he had taken in the morning hadn't worked its way out of his system yet—he woke up briefly as Steve was getting ready for bed and seemed pretty confused.

"Steve?" his half-awake voice mumbled.

Steve turned around. "Hey," he said with a smile.

Bucky didn't smile back. "Where are we?" he asked, and Steve could tell he was shooting for casual, though he didn't quite make it.

"We're home, Buck," Steve said calmly. After a week, you would've thought he'd have gotten used to it, but it still twisted a nauseating little knot in his gut any time Bucky's handle on reality slipped. He did know that if he freaked out, Bucky freaked out, and that staying calm helped him find a foothold a little faster.

He sat down on the mattress next to Bucky and smiled reassuringly. "We're back at home in our room. See?" He waved a hand to take in the rest of the room—Steve's bed, their trunks by the door, the window leading out to the fire escape, the closet, the dresser with a framed photo of Steve's ma and another one of Bucky's parents sitting on top, and the photos and Hogwarts paraphernalia stuck to the walls.

Bucky's eyes followed Steve's gesture around the room, and he nodded slowly, though he still didn't look completely convinced. "I don't remember coming here," he said uncertainly, like it might be the wrong thing to say. "We were…I thought we were at school."

The glassy look in Bucky's eyes kept Steve from worrying (too much) about the memory lapse. Earlier in the week, when he'd asked the Healer about it, he'd been told that the combination of potions Bucky was taking didn't really allow him to absorb or retain a lot of information, which was why Steve had told Bucky twelve times what had happened to make him so big. "We were," Steve agreed, patting him on the shoulder. Physical touch seemed to help ground him faster too. "But we all left this morning. You and your ma came home with a Portkey instead of the train, remember?"

Bucky looked thoughtful for a moment. "Teakettle," he said at last.

"What?" Yeah, the medication made him kind of loopy, but Steve had seen enough of it over the past week to know that at this point in the day—especially since he hadn't taken any more of it—he should be well past the non-sequitur stage.

"Teakettle," Bucky said again. "We had to…" He gestured clumsily with one hand, trying to find the words he was looking for. "We had to touch the thing so we could...Was a teakettle."

Steve realized he was trying to describe the Portkey and nodded, relieved. "That's right," he told him. His vocabulary was still a little mangled from the drugs and exhaustion, but he was remembering, and that was good.

Bucky blinked sleepily, and Steve didn't think he was going to last much longer. "I know…" Bucky started, looking up at Steve suspiciously. "I know you're big now, and you, you told me why, but are you staying big, or are you gonna be little again?"

"I'm staying big," Steve replied. As far as he knew, anyway.

"I asked you that already, didn't I?"

Steve smiled. "Yeah."

"Sorry," Bucky grimaced.

"It's alright," Steve assured him. He patted him on the shoulder again. "Once you get all these drugs out of your system, you'll be able to remember things again."

"I hope so," Bucky yawned. "I don't like this, this…floating. S'like…like…" Sleep was tugging his eyelids closed again, but there was a little tremor in his voice and Steve knew where his brain was going.

"I know," he said, keeping his hand on his shoulder. "But you're not in that lab anymore. You're safe and you're out and they're not touching you again. You're home."

"m'home," Bucky repeated, and his eyes met Steve's briefly before they closed, and there was a little smile sparkling in their depths. He mumbled something that Steve interpreted as a 'thank you' and then was out.

Steve smiled and brushed Bucky's hair back off of his forehead, then stood up and hit the light before climbing into his own bed. Though he wasn't nearly as tired as Bucky was, this was the first time he'd slept in an actual bed in a week, and he was asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow.

They were home. And Bucky was going to be okay.

* * *

Bucky hated being sick. That was more Steve's thing. Steve was sick all the time. He was good at it. Well, maybe it was Steve's thing. Bucky wasn't really sure now. He knew Steve was bigger now, healthier and stronger. Steve had explained it a lot—he'd been very patient. Bucky knew he'd asked a lot—and now that his head was clearing, Bucky could actually remember what Steve had said. And, yeah, he probably wasn't going to be getting sick anymore. Something about the serum protecting his cells. And that was good. It wasn't as though Bucky had _enjoyed_ Steve being sick all the time. It was still kind of weird, though.

Bucky had been thinking about it a lot. It had stopped surprising him when he saw Steve. Visually, he was getting used to the fact that he was big. And back before, it had kind of been alright because it was a whole weird situation—dark wizard factories and Bucky being sick and all. But now they were home, and Steve wasn't supposed to be big here. Bucky was still wrapping his head around that.

It wasn't that he minded. Okay, sure, he was used to being the tall one. The strong one. The protector. Steve was all of those things now, but he always had been inside anyway. It just…matched the outside now. And it didn't make Bucky any less of those things, now that they applied to Steve too. Right?

Bucky sighed and scrubbed his hands down his face. He had way too much time to think. He was glad, he was _so_ glad, that he was off all that medication now. It took his head to weird places and made it hard to think, and for the first time in two weeks, his head was actually clear, and it was a relief. What he hadn't counted on, though, was how much the medication had been helping him sleep. Or, rather, how much it had been helping him _stay_ asleep. He was so exhausted, he still had trouble staying awake, but without the drugs keeping him under, memories of his time in captivity were resurfacing as nightmares. Bad ones. He wanted to sleep. He _needed_ to sleep. But he couldn't sleep. So he spent a lot of time thinking instead.

It was weird, Steve being big and healthy and strong and all. Not that it was bad, it was just different. And it seemed so abrupt—probably because it had happened while Bucky was gone. It wasn't like Bucky wanted Steve to stay little and tiny and sick or anything. It was just different and Bucky…well, Bucky wasn't exactly sure where he fit in anymore. It was like they'd switched places. Steve had been the one to rescue Bucky, and now Steve was taking care of him while he was sick, and it was just weird. Because that was Bucky's job. And Steve didn't need him to do it anymore.

Bucky pushed himself up in bed, forcing his mind down a different track. He felt selfish and pathetic being bothered by all this, and he didn't like it and he didn't want to do it. Steve certainly wasn't acting like anything had changed, so maybe if Bucky followed his lead, it'd be fine. He thought about heading into the kitchen for a drink of water. Yes, there was water on the table by his bed, but making the journey was going to take a lot of concentration, and he figured that was a better thing to focus on than feeling sorry for himself.

Slowly, because he knew if he moved too fast, he would throw up, he levered himself up into a sitting position. He took a moment to get his bearings, then slipped his feet off the side of the bed and planted them on the floor. When no part of his body seemed to raise any objections, he pushed himself carefully to his feet, then promptly fell back onto the bed as the room tilted wildly.

He kept his eyes shut until the floor and the bed stopped whirling underneath him, then opened them cautiously. Nope. Bad idea. He slammed them shut again as the room spun violently, and even with his eyes closed, it took a few minutes to stop. He pulled his feet up off the floor and curled up into a ball, and that seemed to help a little. Looked like he wasn't going anywhere.

A little while later, he heard the door creak open. He figured it was Steve, but when no footsteps came into the room, he cracked an eye curiously. Becky was lingering in the doorway, starting to pull it shut again. "Hey, Becky," he croaked. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Hey, Jay," she said softly. "Sorry I woke you up."

Bucky smiled. "You didn't wake me up."

She huffed a skeptical laugh. "Your eyes were closed."

"Yeah, because I'm dizzy, not because I'm asleep. Whatcha need?" Everyone tended to assume he was sleeping when they left him alone in his room. He didn't correct them, since he knew that's what he was supposed to be doing, but talking to Becky was a much cheerier prospect than lying here alone with his thoughts.

"It's okay. I don't wanna bother you."

"It's fine," he told her, opening both eyes briefly for emphasis. "Seriously, it's really boring laying here with my eyes shut. Come on in and bother me."

She smiled and approached the end of his bed. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better," he told her, which wasn't a lie. Yeah, he felt like crap, but a little less so than yesterday.

"Do you need anything?" she asked.

"Not right now," he replied. "You just come in here to check on me?"

"Well, kind of," she said. "I figured if you were awake, you were probably bored, and I was wondering if maybe you felt like doing a story?" she said hopefully. Bucky opened one eye again to see her holding up a book. "I mean," she hurried to clarify. "We wouldn't have to do it all the way. We wouldn't, like, act it out or anything. You could stay in bed and me and Steve could come in here and we could read it all sitting around."

Bucky smiled. "You know, that sounds like fun." And it did. But Bucky was doing good just to be able to look at her for a few seconds at a time before the room tilted so much he felt like he was going to roll off the bed. "But, I'm sorry, Munchkin, with the way my head's spinning, I don't think I'd make it a paragraph without throwing up."

"Oh," he heard her say. "Alright."

"I'm sorry," he said again.

He risked another look at her, and she smiled back. "It's alright, Jay," she said sincerely. "Really." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Would you, I mean, if you want, maybe I could read it to you?"

He smiled, and something warm uncurled inside his chest. "You would read me a story?" She nodded eagerly and he smiled wider. "I'd like that."

She grinned and climbed up onto the mattress, and he shifted a little closer to the wall so she could come sit by his head. This felt a little weird too—usually he was the one reading to her, but it was sweet. He'd missed his little Munchkin.

"I'm listening," he told her. "But I am gonna keep my eyes shut."

"Okay," she said, clearing her throat before she started to read. She read a for a while, doing her best to do as many different voices as she could. She stumbled occasionally on a hard word, but insisted on sounding it out herself instead of having Bucky open his eyes to read it to her. He fell asleep to the soft sound of her voice, and, for a while, didn't dream about anything.

He woke up abruptly to a dark room, breathing hard and shaking, and it wasn't until Steve's hand clamped around his forearm that Bucky remembered where he was. "Y'okay?" Steve asked sleepily.

Bucky turned his head in the direction of the voice, and it took him a minute to figure out what was going on. Steve's bed used to be on the other side of the room from his. Now they were in an L-shape, with the head of Steve's bed next to the head of Bucky's. Steve seemed to have moved his over at…some point. Bucky must have made enough noise to wake Steve up—not screaming or crying, thankfully, but enough to get Steve's attention, and Steve had reached over and grabbed his arm because he knew that someone touching him helped him remember where he was faster. "Yeah," Bucky replied.

"You sure?" Steve asked, sounding more awake now. Bucky was sure he was ready to come over and sit with him and talk the whole thing out, but Bucky wasn't sure if he wanted that. Well, no, he _did_, but needing someone to hold on to him because he'd had a bad dream and was scared of the dark just made him feel like a little kid, and he wasn't going to get over this if he kept hiding behind Steve.

"I'm fine," he said, even though he could still feel the ghosts of Zola's fingers moving around inside his guts. He didn't think he'd be going back to sleep for a while.

"Okay," Steve said, and he didn't push it. He didn't let go of his arm, though.

And Bucky was okay with that.

* * *

_So, Bucky's getting better, but we can see he's starting to have a little bit of trouble. He's going to have a little more on Monday, but don't worry! Steve is here and he's not going to let his brother fall. _

_I'd love to hear what you guys are thinking!_


	33. A Big Mistake

_So, Bucky's starting to have some trouble now that things are coming back to him. Hopefully, Steve will figure out what's going on in time...  
_

* * *

Very slowly, things were starting to feel normal again. Bucky still slept a lot, but when he was awake, he was able to carry out a coherent conversation, and he remembered things he'd been told before. He was also starting to get irritable, which Steve was taking as a sign that he was getting back to normal—Steve had never liked being sick, but he'd gotten used to it because it happened so often. Bucky was _awful_ at it. The fact that he'd been too sick to complain about being sick had actually been kind of scary, so hopefully this was a move in the right direction.

Mrs. Barnes had had to go back to work, but Steve had assured her that he and Becky could look after Bucky just fine. That felt normal too, her being at work in the mornings. Steve and Becky did some minor cooking, washed dishes and laundry, and just generally went about their usual vacation routine as much as they could. Bucky would usually come out into the living room around lunch, and while he would fall asleep on the couch before too long, they would sit around and talk or read or listen to the radio, and it was starting to feel like it used to.

One thing that wasn't normal, however, was Bucky's nightmares. It was completely understandable that he was having them, but Steve wasn't sure what to do to help with them. Even if Bucky woke up yelling, he would insist he was fine, then roll over to face the wall and go back to sleep. Steve thought it would help if Bucky would talk about it, but he'd always been more private with his emotions, so it didn't really surprise Steve that he didn't want to. Actually, he didn't want to talk about any of it. Not getting caught, not working in the factory, and especially not whatever Zola did to him—and Steve could see in his eyes whenever it came up that it was coming back to him.

"I don't wanna talk about it, Steve," he would snap.

"Are you sure?" Steve would ask. "I mean, I'm not gonna—"

"I said no." Then he would sigh and look away and his cheeks would get red. "I'm sorry," he would say. "I know you're just trying to help. But, I—I can't."

Steve would nod and they would move on and talk about something else. He didn't think it was good for Bucky to keep it all bottled up, but if he wasn't ready, Steve wouldn't push him. He didn't think that would help. It was kind of weird, being the one taking care of Bucky. Not because Steve didn't want to, but because he'd never really done it before. Not like this. He hoped he was doing it right. He tried to remember the kinds of things Bucky would do for him when he was sick, and do that.

He _did_ seem to be getting better. They'd only been home for four days, but every day, he was able to stay awake a little longer. He could get around the house under his own steam—slowly, and he usually had a hand on a wall or a piece of furniture to keep himself up, but he was mobile. His breathing was clearing up from the pneumonia, and he was keeping most of his food down. Physically, he was well on his way to recovery, but…Steve was having trouble putting his finger on it. It felt stupid to say there was still something wrong, because that much was obvious, but Steve couldn't define it any better than that.

Even with as much as he was on the upswing, Bucky was still looking pretty haggard. It didn't make sense, he was getting rest and getting better, but the circles around his eyes were getting darker instead of lighter as the days went on. The tremor in his hands started up again too, and he was getting increasingly moody. Yeah, he got irritable when he was sick, but he was snapping at everyone now, even his ma, then he would apologize and get all sullen and not talk to anyone for a while. He hadn't wanted to talk to Steve before about what had happened, but now he barely spoke to him at all beyond grunts and monosyllabic answers. Steve trying to get him to open up didn't work out well for anybody.

Steve wondered if this was what it had been like for Bucky back when his ma died and he kept pushing him away. What had Bucky done then? There had been the whole yelling in the bathroom thing, but Steve didn't think they were there yet. He was hoping to head it off before they got there. Bucky had just…Well, he'd been _there_. He'd back off for a little bit and then come back and try again, but he never got too far away. Steve could do that.

It went on like that for three more days, Steve trying not to push but making sure he was there. He felt like he wasn't getting anywhere—Bucky was a lot better at this kind of thing than he was. Bucky was obviously trying not to take out whatever was going on in his head on everyone else, but he didn't always succeed. And he was just looking so worn down. Was he getting sick again? Had the Healers missed something?

The next afternoon, Steve was coming back up the stairs from taking the garbage down to the dumpster. Mrs. Barnes met him at the door. "Steve, did Bucky…" She looked past him down the stairwell. "Did you see Bucky out here?"

"No, ma'am," he said. "Why?"

She drew in a deep breath. "I can't find him."

"What do you mean?" Steve asked. "He was in our room."

"Well, he's not there now."

"Is he in the bathroom?"

"He's not in the apartment, Steve," she said shortly. "I'm sorry," she said, closing her eyes briefly. "I don't mean to…"

"It's alright," Steve said. She was worried, as well she should be. "I'll go find him. Just let me get my coat." He hadn't needed it for the quick run downstairs, so he swung into his room and grabbed it, then scooped his wand into his pocket after a moment's hesitation. Just in case.

"You stay here," he told her. "In case he comes back from wherever he went. I'll go track him down. He can't have gone too far." He wasn't exactly quick on his feet these days.

She nodded and Steve hurried down the steps. He had no idea what could have possessed Bucky to leave the apartment, but seeing as no one had seen him do it, it probably meant he'd gone out the window in their room and down the fire escape. Steve moved around to start from there.

He wondered how much of a head start he'd gotten. He'd been asleep in their room—or they thought he had anyway—for about an hour. Steve hoped that, wherever he'd gone, he'd thought to take a jacket. And shoes.

He moved down the alley behind the apartment. He wondered if there was a tracking spell to find a specific person. It would come in handy right about now, especially since the only one he had was the one he'd used to find Bucky in the factory. That one revealed human presence, and, seeing as how there were a couple thousand people on this block alone, it wasn't going to be particularly useful. "Bucky?" he called, not really expecting an answer and not getting one.

There wasn't really anywhere for him to have gone in the alley, so when Steve hit the end of it, he decided to go left. The sidewalk to the right was crowded with piping and platforms and other pieces of construction, so the clearer path to the left seemed more logical for someone not too steady on his feet. He passed a grocery store and a couple of other little shops, and he went inside each one and looked around. This wasn't an area of the neighborhood they were in much—it wasn't a bad area, they just went most places out the front of the building. Because this wasn't a familiar part of town, no one knew who Bucky was when Steve asked. He described him to a couple of the shop owners, but they hadn't seen him. Was he going the right way?

He decided to go a little farther before turning around and checking the other direction. He passed a couple more stores, and stepped into a bar at the end of the block. He wasn't supposed to be in there, but he needed to get out of the wind for a minute. Thankfully, the serum had cured his asthma, so he was breathing alright (and that was still pretty exciting), but his ears and his face were freezing. He should have brought a scarf.

Being four o'clock in the afternoon, the bar was mostly empty. There were a few people in booths by the window, and someone sitting down at the far end of the bar, and Steve's jaw just about dropped to the floor when he saw that it was Bucky.

"Bucky?!" he said incredulously, making his way over.

Bucky looked up at the sound of his name. "Hey, Steve," he said with a lopsided smile.

"What…" Steve started, trailing off as he got a look at him. His eyes were glassy and his cheeks were red, and there were an awful lot of glasses on the table in front of him. "Are you drunk?!"

Bucky looked down at the glasses and smacked his lips thoughtfully, then looked back up at Steve and sniffed. "Probably," he said.

Steve stared at him with his mouth hanging open, completely lost for words. "What…" he stammered, not really sure of what else to say. His eye caught the bartender and he whirled to face him. "What the hell?" he demanded. "Why in the world would you let him do that?!" He gestured at the empty glasses in front of Bucky.

"What?" the guy asked. "He makes an order; I serve the drinks. That's how it works, man." He shrugged. "Looked like he was having a rough day."

Steve shook his head and pointed back at Bucky. "He is _fifteen_," he growled.

A crack appeared in the bartender's unconcerned façade. "Fifteen?" he asked. "Really?"

Bucky did look mature for his age—and at least he'd changed into actual clothes instead of keeping his pajamas on to sneak out—but eighteen was a stretch.

"I am," Bucky agreed conversationally, and Steve was pleased to see the bartender's face lose a little bit of color.

"Come on, Buck," he said, grabbing his arm. "We're going home."

"No, wait…" Bucky complained, reaching for the half-full glass in front of him.

"You're done," Steve snapped, smacking his hand and yanking him off the bar stool. Bucky stumbled, but Steve kept a hold of him and he kept his feet.

"Hey, uh," the bartender said before they started walking. "Somebody's gotta pay for all that." He waved a hand at Bucky's collection of glasses. "Your buddy drank a lot."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did he?" Steve snarled. "Did the teenager who shouldn't even _be_ in this building in the first place drink a lot of the alcohol that _you_ gave him? You wanna push this? I will _gladly_ take it up with whoever runs the place."

The bartender held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and turned away, just like Steve had been hoping he would. If he hadn't been so unbelievably furious right now, he probably would have enjoyed the fact that he could be physically intimidating for the first time in, like, ever. He shoved Bucky toward the door more forcefully than he probably should have, and Bucky whined in protest but went where he was directed. He stopped abruptly outside the door, and Steve swallowed down the urge to smack him across the back of the head for being stupid enough not to bring a jacket, but he shrugged his own off and draped it over Bucky's shoulders.

"This way," he said, putting an arm around his shoulders to keep him upright and make sure he went in the right direction.

"It's really cold," Bucky complained.

"Yeah, because it's December and you came out here without a coat, you moron," Steve growled.

Bucky pursed his lips in confusion. "But I'm wearing a coat."

"You're wearing mine," Steve snapped.

"Oh." They walked in silence for a beat. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Steve replied automatically.

"You should take it back, though," Bucky said, struggling clumsily under Steve's arm to try to take it off. "You'll get sick."

Steve was unexpectedly touched that somewhere underneath all the alcohol and whatever had messed him up enough to think drinking it would be a good idea, Bucky was still trying to take care of Steve. "It's okay," Steve said a little more gently, reaching his other arm over to still Bucky's attempts to remove the coat. "I'll be alright."

Bucky snorted. "You always say that."

Steve smiled a little. "Yeah, well, it's true this time."

Bucky squinted up at him. "Oh, yeah." He poked him in the arm. "You got the super-juice now."

"I guess that's one way to put it," Steve agreed.

They didn't talk much as they headed for home. Bucky was humming "Summertime" to himself, and Steve was trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do now. Bucky was drunk. Bucky. Was drunk. It was just so…Steve was having trouble getting his brain beyond that thought. Bucky was responsible. Bucky made good choices. Bucky didn't do things like this. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong; a lot more than whatever it was that Steve had been worrying about these past few days. He swallowed hard as he realized he had no idea what he was going to do when they got home. Because Mrs. Barnes was going to kill Bucky. She was going to do what _Hydra_ hadn't managed to do, and she was actually going to murder him.

Once they were back in the alley that led to the apartment, the wind died down significantly. Steve walked them all the way down and stopped under the fire escape on the far side of a stack of crates that blocked the wind almost entirely. "Alright," he growled, grabbing Bucky's shoulders and wheeling him around so that his back was against the wall. Bucky blinked up at him in surprise. "What the hell is the matter with you?!"

Bucky stared at him in confusion for a moment, then, much to Steve's surprise, started to giggle. "_Every_thing's the matter with me, Stevie," he said with a wide, crooked grin. He sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of Steve's coat. "Hydra messed me up real good."

Some of the anger burning in Steve's chest started to cool down. "Okay," he said slowly. "Talk to me, Buck. What's going on?"

"Well, you…You pushed me into the wall, an' now we're standing by the boxes—"

"No," Steve cut him off, trying not to get annoyed. "The bar, Bucky. Why were you in a bar getting drunk?"

"Oh." Bucky looked down at his feet and was quiet for long enough that Steve was starting to wonder if he was going to say anything. He looked back up at Steve, and something desperate and frightened swam up from behind the alcohol in his eyes. "It's s'posed to make you forget," he said softly. "I wanted to forget."

A cold knot twisted in Steve's stomach. "What were you trying to forget?"

"Everything," Bucky whispered. He swallowed hard several times and his voice was shaky when he spoke again. "I can't stop seeing it, Stevie. It's all…" He raised a shaking hand to paw clumsily at the side of his head. "Do you know what I see?" He rubbed his temple and blinked sadly at Steve. "Do you know what I see when I close my eyes?"

Steve shook his head. He didn't think he wanted to know—not really—but Bucky needed him to. And this wasn't the way Steve had wanted it to happen, but he was finally ready to talk. "What do you see?" he asked softly.

"I see, I see…They killed March," Bucky said, and it took Steve a second to remember that that was the name of Bucky's unit commander. "Right in front of me," Bucky continued. "Just, just, just, _poof_!" He made an exploding gesture with his hands and nearly hit Steve's nose. "An' he was gone. Not even dust or ashes or anything, he was just _gone_. He still screamed, though, Steve. I heard it. An' Albert." Steve didn't know who Albert was, but Bucky was still talking. "He got stuck in the machine, an' his…his…" He waved his right hand at his left arm. "He got caught an', oh, _ga-ah_—" He made a choking sound like he was trying not to throw up and pressed his fist against his mouth. "It just tore it off, there was nothing left," he said. "Just…strings an' pieces of…" He was gesturing at his arm again and Steve's brain filled in rest of the very unpleasant picture.

"An' then they shot him," Bucky whispered. His haunted eyes weren't looking at Steve anymore, but through him. "He couldn't work an' they just, they shot him! The blood…the blood went everywhere, an' they made me go back to work, but his blood, his blood was on my shirt, an' it was warm, an' I could feel it, an' it kept getting colder."

Steve stared at Bucky in horror as he spoke. He'd known it had been bad in there, but he hadn't wanted to think about _how_ bad. And it sounded like Bucky was just getting started.

"I don't know what happened to the Dutch kid," he said sadly. "He was messed up, Stevie, I don' know what happened to him before he got there, but it was somethin' bad an' he was scared. He talked to himself a lot an' didn't like to look at your eyes, but he was in my cage an' I was s'posed to take care of him, an' one day he didn't come back. He never came back. He was so scared an' he died somewhere alone, an' I don't even know what his name was."

It was so very Bucky to try to take care of everyone, even when it wasn't his responsibility, and it hurt to think that he had lost someone he was trying to protect. Steve opened his mouth to reassure him, but Bucky wasn't done.

"There were so many of them," he said softly. "All the hurt soldiers that got zapped away in the night on the hill. An' people disappeared all the time, an' you could hear them scream when they got hurt or cry at night when we were locked up in the dark. Then I disappeared," he whispered. "An' Zola found me." He swallowed hard and blinked and he was looking at Steve again, and his body was shaking along with his voice. "Steve, I've never been more scared of anything in my life. Just his face, an'…" His mouth twisted in hard lines and he tangled his fingers in his hair as he grabbed the sides of his head. "His voice, Steve, I can still hear his voice in the dark. He would, he would…He enjoyed it, Steve. He would give me potions an' it hurt an' it felt like I was on fire, an' I couldn't move, an' he would cut me open an' dig his hands around inside of me an' I would _beg_ him to stop, an' he _enjoyed_ it. An' he would give me more potions and cast these spells, an'…an'…" He made a choking sound and his mouth worked like it couldn't find the words it wanted. "Steve, do you know what it's like to not know what's real?" he whispered desperately. "To see things that aren't there an' not be able to get away from them? To forget if you had ever not been in the dark? Or to pray for things that weren't real so you could imagine that it didn't hurt for a little while?" One corner of his mouth crooked up in the saddest smile Steve had ever seen. "I used to think I was seein' you," he rasped. "Little Steve. You'd come an' sit in the lab, an' Zola couldn't see you, so he couldn't make you go away, an' you would talk to me. Kept me from floating away to the bad places."

Steve had to swallow down a knot in his throat before he could say anything. "Aw, Buck," he said sadly.

"I see it all," Bucky said before Steve could say anything else. "All the time. That's what I wanna forget, Steve. But I can't. It won't go away, an' I'm so _tired_," he groaned. The tears that were pooling in his eyes were still stubbornly refusing to fall. Steve wondered briefly how he could be tired when almost all he did was sleep, before it hit him like a punch in the gut that he wasn't sleeping. Not if he was seeing all this.

"Bucky," Steve asked gently. "When was the last time you slept?"

Bucky considered. "All night?" he clarified. He shook his head sadly. "First night we came home. Jus' a little bit here an' there after that." He drew in a shaky breath. "I just, I can't…I just wanna sleep, but there's nowhere to run when I'm asleep. I can't get away from it, an' it won't get away from me, an' then I wake up an' it follows me. S'like Hydra reached down inside me an' pulled everything out an' mixed it all up, an' it went back in wrong. An' I don't know how to put it back. I'm tired of seeing it all, an' I'm tired of remembering, an' I'm tired of everything hurting an' of just…just…" His mouth twisted up as he lost the battle with his tears. "I'm tired of being broken," he breathed before just crumpling and falling forward into Steve's arms, a miserable howl escaping his throat as he sobbed into his chest.

Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky so tightly he was worried he might crack his bones, but he couldn't let go. He tucked Bucky's head under his chin and leaned in, embracing him and trying to cover as much of him as he could, to shield him from the world. He'd never imagined…What he'd been picturing didn't even come close to what had happened to Bucky, and the fact that his best friend had come out of it at all was nothing short of a miracle. Anger burned hot in his chest, so strongly that he thought this might be the first time in his life he'd ever understood what it actually meant to hate something. He'd hated Hydra for a long time, after what had happened to his ma, but they'd still been an anonymous, faceless sort of evil. But now there were names, faces he had seen and things he had touched, somewhere specific that he could direct the hatred that was burning sharp and clear and that he could actually _do_ something with now. That rage at Hydra swirled together with pride in Bucky that he'd been strong enough to survive, and it mingled with grief at what that survival had cost and fear at how it had left him.

They stood there, unmoving, for a long time.

"It's okay," Steve whispered into Bucky's hair when he could finally speak again. "You're gonna be okay." He wasn't sure how yet, but he would. Peggy had been right—Steve wasn't going to let him be anything else. And he'd promised him that he was never going to give up on him. That was a promise he was going to keep. "We're gonna figure this out. You and me. We'll figure this out and you're gonna be okay. You're not getting off this train yet, pal. End of the line."

He heard what might have been a very watery laugh from somewhere near his armpit. Bucky raised his head, and when he straightened up, he wasn't actually that much shorter than Steve. His eyes were red and runny, and he wiped absently at the snot dripping from his nose as he looked up at Steve with as much concentration as his inebriated brain could muster. "You really are me now, aren'tcha?"

"What?" Steve asked.

Bucky waved an uncoordinated hand up and down, encompassing all of Steve, and this time he did hit him in the nose. "You. You're all…" He waved both hands and Steve stepped back so he wouldn't get hit again. "Erskine magicked you into Big Steve, an' you an' me, s'like we switched, y'know? You're big an' healthy an' takin' care of ev'ryone, an' I'm…little an' sick an' getting took care of." He poked him in the chest. "You're me." He sniffed thoughtfully. "'Cept I'm not really you. You were a tough little guy. I'm like…" He trailed off pensively. "I'm just like a more broken version of me," he decided. He poked Steve in the chest again. "You're the good one."

"Bucky," Steve started, not liking at all where this was going.

Bucky cut him off with a huff of foul-smelling breath. "S'alright," he said conversationally. You're a good guy. Think you were always a better guy than me. 'Cept I'm just wondering now…" He huffed a short laugh. "We don't need two of me. An' since you're the more better one, I'm not sure of what's the point of me anymore?"

Steve's mouth dropped open. Just when he thought his heart couldn't break into any smaller pieces…He wasn't sure what hurt more—the words Bucky was saying or the casual way he was saying them. "Bucky, you're not…" He drew in a long breath. Yeah, it had been kind of weird being bigger than Bucky, and being on his side of the sickbed for once, but not once had he actually thought that Bucky would think…He shook his head. Bucky was as far from worthless as anyone could ever be. Since they had stopped in the alley, he had said so much, uncovered so many wounds, and maybe sober he wouldn't have, but they were exposed now and he was trusting Steve to bind them up. And there was so much racing through Steve's mind, so much he wanted to say, to soothe, to heal. But this wasn't the time. Bucky's words were stumbling over each other and slurring together, and he was swaying on his feet and Steve could tell there wasn't a lot of consciousness left in him.

"We're going to talk about this tomorrow," Steve told him, taking a firm hold of his shoulders. "All of it. About how you're going to stop trying to do this by yourself, and about how I'm going to help you, and about no matter how big I am, you are never, _ever_ going to be pointless." Bucky blinked at him and Steve wondered if he'd absorbed a word of that. "But right now, we're going to clean you up and go inside, because your ma is worried about you. Then you're going to sleep this off, and we're going to set things straight." He propped Bucky up to lean against the wall. "Hold still."

Before Bucky could react, Steve pulled out his wand, pointed it at Bucky and said, "_Augamenti_." Bucky sputtered as he was hit in the face with a stream of water, and Steve felt a little bad that it was cold, but he didn't know how to warm it up. (He knew he wasn't supposed to be using magic outside of school, but this was a special circumstance, and they were close enough to the house, it wasn't going to set off the Trace—Mrs. Barnes had explained about that when she was teaching them spells to help around the house.) After he made sure that Bucky was thoroughly drenched and hopefully smelling better, he used the same drying spell that Peggy had used on him to dry his soaking friend off. He made sure he was completely dry—the last thing he needed was for Bucky to get sick again on top of everything else—then put an arm over his shoulders and started steering him towards the stairs.

"What'd you do that for?" Bucky grumbled.

"Because you smelled like a bar."

Bucky sniffed. "I was in a bar."

"I know," Steve said. "But your ma doesn't." The thought of lying to Mrs. Barnes made him physically nauseous, but this…All it would do was hurt her if she knew. Neither she or Bucky needed that. "You let me do all the talking when we get inside," he warned.

He thought it was best they go in the front door, so they circled around to the front of the building. By the time they made their way up the stairs, Bucky was hanging onto such a slender thread of consciousness that Steve didn't think he'd need to worry about him saying anything. He shifted his grip on Bucky and opened the door, half-supporting, half-dragging him into the living room.

"Bucky!" Mrs. Barnes exclaimed, jumping up from the couch. Becky leapt up off the floor and they rushed forward.

"He's alright!" Steve said pre-emptively. He made a bit of a show of hefting him up as he sagged down. "He's really, he's okay, but he's kind of heavy, can I just go…" He nodded toward their bedroom, and Mrs. Barnes and Becky nodded and moved out of the way. The less time they spent around him right now, the less suspicious they would be. (His face was close enough to Steve's that he could still catch a fairly strong scent of alcohol on his breath.) "I'll be right back," he told them.

He got Bucky back to the room and kicked the door shut behind them. Carefully lowering Bucky to sit down on the bed, he moved to pour him a glass of water, then shot an arm out to keep him from falling over. He kept one hand on Bucky's shoulder and used one to pour water from the jug on the nightstand. "Okay. Drink this," he said, handing the glass to Bucky and making sure he used both hands to hold it. "Slowly!" he warned. He didn't think either of them wanted it coming back up.

Bucky complied and drank slowly, and Steve somehow managed to keep him up with one hand and take his coat and shoes off with the other. He accepted the empty glass and set it aside, lowering Bucky back until he was laying down. Bucky blinked groggily. "Steve?" he mumbled.

"Ssh," Steve said, rolling him so that he was laying on his side. He pulled the trash can over and placed it by the bed. "It's okay."

Bucky didn't open his eyes, but his eyebrows furrowed together in consternation. "I messed up, didn' I?" he whispered.

"It's okay," Steve said again, smiling sadly. He pulled the blankets up and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Just go to sleep."

* * *

_Mistakes have been made, but Steve has a plan now. Time for things to start looking up._

_Historical side note: Bucky was still engaging in some under-age drinking here, but no one was mistaking him for a 21 year old. Legal drinking age in New York at the time was 18._


	34. Not Broken, Just Bent

_Alright! Time for fixing things, affirmation, and some hugs. Bucky needs this, and I think we do too.  
_

* * *

When Bucky woke up, the first thought he had was that waking up had been a terrible idea. The second thought was everything hurt and he might be dying. He groaned miserably and considered then dismissed the idea of opening his eyes.

"Morning," said a voice that he didn't think was his.

Bucky groaned again and cracked an eye open, and it took him a minute to put together that the reason he couldn't see anything was because his face was in his pillow. It took an awful lot of work to turn his head. "Mmf," he grunted.

Steve was sitting on his bed, looking over at Bucky and looking just a little smug. "How's your head?" he asked. Yep. Definitely smug. Bucky glared at him suspiciously. He felt awful—in a different way than he had been—and Steve seemed to know why. What was…oh. _Oh_. A smirk joined Steve's smug expression. "Coming back to you?"

Bucky closed his eyes, humiliation burning hot in his cheeks. "Yeah," he groaned into his pillow. His throat was raspy, and his mouth tasted as though something had crawled into it and died. He squinted one eye open again, and, okay, Steve was smug but at least he was thoughtful, because there was a glass of water sitting on the table by his bed. Very carefully, Bucky sat up, one hand twisted in his hair to keep his head from falling off. The glass of water weighed about a thousand pounds, but he managed to bring it to his lips and cautiously take a drink. He felt very marginally better when he was done.

He had very little desire to look up at Steve again and see that smug expression and the disappointment he was sure was behind it. Yesterday was kind of foggy, but he knew Steve had been there, dragging him back home from the bar. And Steve had been _pissed_. He sighed. He shared a room with the guy, it's not like he could avoid him forever. Tentatively, he raised his head (which had to weigh at least twice as much as the glass of water) and looked over at Steve, waiting for the axe to fall.

Steve didn't look smug anymore, but he didn't look disappointed either. He looked a little concerned, but mostly he was just watching Bucky. If his head didn't hurt so much, Bucky probably would have been able to decipher his expression, but he wasn't having any luck right now. Steve was gonna make him go first, wasn't he? Yeah, Bucky had done a colossally stupid thing, but that was just mean. He sighed again.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, hanging his head. He didn't think he could look at Steve anymore. "I…" He didn't know what he'd been thinking. It had been a clawing, desperate attempt to escape the pain and the weight of his nightmares, and all he'd succeeded in doing was making himself sick, worrying his family, and proving to Steve and everyone else how pathetic he really was. "I'm sorry," he said again. It was really all he could say. "Go ahead," he said, rubbing his aching forehead. "You can go ahead and yell at me. I…" Steve was going to have a lot to say. And Bucky was going to take it, because he deserved it. May as well get it over with.

A soft laugh had him looking up at Steve. Whatever that expression had been on Steve's face, it had softened, and he was smiling sadly at Bucky, compassion swimming in his bright blue eyes. "I'm not gonna yell at you, Buck," he said gently.

Bucky titled his head, puzzled. "You're not?" His brain wasn't quite firing on all cylinders yet, but he knew he'd screwed up big time, and Steve should be exploding with that righteous anger that had been terrifying enough when he'd been four and a half feet tall.

"No." Steve shook his head. He smiled a little. "Believe me, I want to." Bucky winced. "But I won't," Steve said. "Because I get it. I get what it's like to be afraid to close your eyes. I get what it's like to have this…" He gestured at his chest as he searched for the word he wanted. "_Hole_ that's just eating away at your insides. I get what it's like to feel like you're in so many pieces, you don't think they'll ever go back together. I get what it's like to want to do anything—even something you know is stupid—if it'll just make it stop hurting." He drew in a deep breath to steady the waver in his voice. "That's why I'm not gonna yell at you. Because I understand."

Sudden emotion churned in Bucky's chest, shame and a sense of relief fighting for dominance. "You do, don't you?" he whispered, his throat tight.

"I do," Steve said. His eyes were watering and full of sympathy and sincerity, and not an ounce of the pity or reproach or condemnation Bucky had been so afraid of. Hesitantly, like he wasn't sure how Bucky was going to react, Steve pushed himself to his feet, crossed over to Bucky's bed and sat down beside him. He put a tentative arm over Bucky's shoulders, and Bucky had been fighting it for so long, trying to prove he was strong enough to do this on his own, but he just couldn't do it anymore and he leaned into Steve's side, soaking in the safety and comfort and reassurance that he wasn't alone that he'd been craving.

"I may have self-destructed off in a different direction than you did," Steve said, and Bucky could hear a small smile in his voice. "But I've been in that same hole, man. I know how dark and lonely it is in there. And I know what you're trying to do, because I did it too, but you don't have to get out of there all by yourself." He squeezed Bucky's arm. "I didn't."

"Steve—" Bucky started, but Steve cut him off.

"No," he said, firmly, but not unkindly. "You did an awful lot of talking yesterday. Now it's my turn."

Bucky was dimly aware of some sort of…drunken verbal tidal wave, but he didn't have any memory of what the content had been. He cast a sideways, nervous glance at Steve. What had he said?

Steve drew in a deep breath, and his next words came out shaking a little with very carefully controlled anger. "First of all, if you…If you _ever_ say again that what happened to me means that you're not worth anything anymore, I'm going to break your nose."

Bucky swallowed hard. Had he actually said that? He didn't…Okay, his thoughts had been sort of wandering that way, but did he actually say that to Steve's face?

"How can you…I mean, I know your head's been in a bad place for a while, but do you honestly think that how strong you are or what you can do is all that matters to me? Or to anyone?"

Bucky looked away, unable to face Steve's wounded expression and know he was the one that put it there. "I didn't mean it like that," he whispered.

"Then what did you mean?"

Bucky had really, _really_ not wanted to talk about this with Steve. Ever. But apparently he already had. "I don't…" He swallowed down a lump in his throat. "I don't remember what I actually said yesterday, but, I just…I've been trying to wrap my head around how everything's changed and I, well, I'm not sure where I fit anymore. I've always looked out for you, and now that you don't need me anymore, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do," he admitted quietly.

Steve squeezed his shoulder. "Nothing's changed," he said softly. "Look at me," he said. Bucky didn't know if he could do it. "Bucky, look at me," Steve said again. Bucky slowly turned shame-filled eyes up to meet his. "Nothing's changed, Buck," he said again. "I'm still me. I'm still the nerdy little punk who draws and reads and lays on the furniture weird and takes too long in the shower and folds shirts better than you ever will. I'm still the guy who gets into fights that are too big for him." A half-smile tugged up one side of his mouth. "I'm still the guy who needs his best friend. I don't need you one bit less than I did before, because that fact that you took care of me was never why I needed you, Buck. I needed you because you care _about_ me. You don't give up on me. You're always there for me. You're…" He drew in a shaky breath. "Bucky, you're my brother. That's why I needed you and that's why I still need you. That's why I'm _always_ gonna need you. Doesn't matter how big or strong or sick or messed up either of us are."

If he hadn't known what a terrible liar Steve was, he wouldn't have believed it—it was just too good, just too exactly what he wanted to hear. What he _needed_ to hear. But Steve, well, Steve had always known what he needed. And the eyes, the eyes were where Steve's lies always fell apart, and right now they were blazing with so much sincerity that Bucky wondered how he could have ever thought Steve didn't need him in the first place.

"I…" Bucky started. He wasn't sure what to say. "I'm sorry." That seemed too inadequate. His head had just been such a messed up place lately—that was all he could really think of to explain it. Because he knew, down underneath where everything hurt, he _knew_ that Steve had never valued him for his strength, just like he'd never thought less of him for his lack of it. "I was being stupid, I…" He shook his head, lost for words, but Steve smiled, and in that moment Bucky knew Steve knew what he was trying to say, and that the hurt he'd caused him with whatever his words yesterday had been and the misguided thoughts behind them had been forgiven.

Bucky nodded, and managed to smile back a little. "So," he began, but Steve cut him off again.

"I'm not done yet," he told him. "We just needed to get that one taken care of first."

"Oh," Bucky said quietly. He'd said _more_? "What else did I do?"

A humorless smile flitted across Steve's lips. "Like I said, you said a lot." He chewed pensively on his bottom lip for a second. "You told me about Hydra. What they did. Why you haven't been sleeping."

Bucky grimaced, a nauseous knot twisting in his stomach. He'd been trying so hard to keep that to himself.

"I'm sorry," Steve said, surprising Bucky. "I should've…I know what they did to you was messed up. I should've realized how much it would…" He shook his head. "You told me you haven't been able to sleep since the first night we got home?"

"Yeah," Bucky admitted quietly. No point trying to hide it now. "The medicine was tripping me out, but it was helping me sleep, too. Once I got off it, I…I can't stay asleep. The nightmares just keep getting worse."

Steve nodded. "I should've caught that you weren't sleeping before you told me."

"It's not your fault," he told him. He'd been acting like he was sleeping more than he was, because that was what he was supposed to be doing—not letting anyone know he was struggling had kind of been the whole point.

Steve inclined his head in a way that told Bucky he didn't really buy that, but he wasn't going to argue about it right now. "You can't keep doing that," he said instead.

"I know," Bucky nodded. "I think…I think I thought maybe the drinking thing would help."

"Did it?"

"A little," Bucky admitted. He hadn't forgotten anything, but he had slept. He slowly shook his aching head. "Don't think it was worth it, though."

Steve nodded. "Good." Bucky didn't know if he meant it was good that he'd slept or good that he wasn't planning on doing it again. Probably both.

Bucky's stomach twisted and he swallowed down an anxious knot in his throat. Drinking until he passed out was a bad idea, and he knew that, but he knew what was waiting for him next time he tried to go to sleep, and he just didn't know how much longer he could take it.

"I'm guessing," Steve said. "That you're trying to figure out where to go from here." Bucky looked up at him curiously. Erskine's potion didn't allow him to read minds, did it? "The thing is, Buck," he continued, pulling in a deep breath. "Is that you're trying to figure it out all by yourself. And that's never gonna work."

Bucky felt heat rising in his cheeks, and Steve hurried on. "Not because you're stupid, or pathetic or weak. You've never been any of those things, Bucky, and you're not now. You can't do it by yourself because this is the kind of thing that nobody can do by themselves. I know you think that it's your job to take care of everybody, but that doesn't mean nobody can take care of you. Needing help doesn't make you weak." He nudged him with his shoulder. "After ma died, I was a wreck. Was I some sort of pitiful excuse for a human being for needing you to get me through it?"

"No," Bucky said automatically, even though he knew Steve was going to use that to defend his point.

Steve smiled like he knew what Bucky was thinking. "It works the other way around too, you know. You can only be a failure for needing help if I'm a pathetic loser too."

Bucky knew what Steve was trying to say, and he wanted to believe him. He did. But he didn't know how to let it go. "Steve—"

"What happened to you was messed up, Bucky," Steve said. "And it doesn't make you weak for being shook up by it. It doesn't make you some sort of coward for being scared. The fact that you're not sure where to go from here does not make you any less James Buchanan Barnes than you were before any of this happened. Hell, if anything, it makes you strong, and do you know why?"

Steve seemed to want an actual answer to that, so Bucky shook his head, not trusting his words right now.

"Because you _survived_," Steve said emphatically. "You hung on, and you came out of there beat to hell, but you _came out_. And you…" He drew in a long breath, his eyes beginning to water. "Bucky, you're not broken. Maybe a little bent," he added with a watery smile. "But we can fix that. You're not broken, and you're never gonna be so deep in that hole that you can't get out. Not while you've got me. I'm gonna get you out, and you're gonna be okay."

Bucky pressed his lips together to keep them from shaking, and he knew he was seconds away from tears. "I can't see it, Steve," he admitted. Maybe he had survived, but he didn't know how much of him had. 'Okay' felt so far away that he had no idea how he was going to find it.

"I know," Steve said, tightening his grip on Bucky's arm. "And it may take a while to get there," he admitted. "But one day you will," he declared, echoing Bucky's words to him from the night his ma died. "And I'm not going anywhere."

Bucky lost the battle with his tears, but he managed to smile and whisper, "Thanks," before they started coming. He felt Steve shift on the mattress, moving to put both arms around Bucky and folding him gently into his chest. Bucky just let himself cry, and was surprised to find that it didn't feel like giving up. It didn't feel great, but it didn't feel like he had failed. It felt safe. Steve said he was going to be okay, and he still didn't see how, but he trusted Steve to help him get there. He always trusted Steve.

* * *

Steve held on to Bucky and just let him cry. This wasn't the frightened, desperate sobbing of that first morning in the infirmary or the broken howls of misery from yesterday in the alley. This was quieter, softer, far less dramatic but infinitely more important acceptance. The start of healing. It wasn't going to be easy, but it was going to happen, and Bucky was finally ready to let Steve help. Steve still wasn't sure what exactly he could do, but they could figure that part out together.

When Bucky stopped crying, he sat up, sniffing and wiping at his eyes and nose with his sleeve. Steve looked him over, and he was a mess, but there was a resolution in his eyes that hadn't been there before. Steve smiled and clapped him gently on the shoulder. "Listen," he told him. "I meant it, what I said. Whatever help you need to get through this, I'm here." He wanted to make absolutely sure that Bucky got it. He remembered how hard it was to actually ask for help, even after you knew you needed it.

"If you need to talk," Steve went on. "Then I'll listen. If you need something to distract you, then I'll talk—about the Falcons or the Dodgers or Charms class or Vicki Marlowe or the Wizard of Oz or whatever. If you need to cry…" He reached up and slapped his own shoulder. "I've got a couple of good shoulders right here. If you need to yell…" He shrugged. "It won't hurt my feelings. Hell, if you need to hit something…" He smiled and held his arms out. "I can take a good hit." He dropped the smile and looked at Bucky seriously. "And if you wake up in the middle of the night and you just need something to hold on to…" He nodded over to his own bed. "I'm two feet away. Don't ever be afraid to ask me for whatever you need." When he'd been drowning after his ma had died and Bucky had pulled him back up, he'd made it abundantly clear that he was never going to judge Steve for asking for something that would help. The same thing was true this time around, and he knew that Bucky knew that, but he stared at him until he nodded just to make sure.

Bucky looked a little embarrassed, but he smiled. "Thanks." He didn't seem sure what to say after that, and Steve got that too—he'd felt awfully stupid when he'd realized he didn't have to fix everything himself too.

"How do you feel?" he asked, changing the subject. Bucky's eyes were red and his nose was runny, and there was still a faint scent of alcohol lingering on his clothes that Steve hadn't gotten out with the spell yesterday. His breath was pretty dreadful too, and he winced whenever he moved his head. Steve had never been hungover before, but he imagined it was pounding something awful. "You gonna throw up again?" He'd noticed Bucky swallowing convulsively a few times throughout their conversation, the occasional sick look flitting across his face. Some of that might have had to do with the subject matter, but he still had to be pretty queasy.

"Again?" Bucky asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

"You threw up a couple times last night," Steve told him. He hadn't been particularly conscious for it, so it was fair enough that he didn't remember. Not all of it had made it into the trashcan. Steve had managed to Vanish the rest of it, but laundry was definitely going to happen after breakfast.

"Oh." Bucky put a hand to his stomach carefully. "I think if I move slow, I'll be alright."

Steve nodded. "You should go take a shower. It'll help you feel better, and you smell terrible."

Bucky huffed a surprised laugh at that, sobering quickly as he looked at the door. "How much trouble am I in?"

Steve's eyebrows drew together, confused. "What do you mean? I already told you, I'm not gonna yell at you."

"No," Bucky said, rubbing at the back of his neck. He nodded minutely toward the door. "With Ma."

"Oh." Steve looked at the door, then back at Bucky. "You're not."

"What?" he asked skeptically.

"You're not in trouble," Steve told him. He swallowed hard. "Because I told your ma that between the factory and the infirmary and here, you've been cooped up inside for so long you were starting to get a little stir-crazy, so you snuck out the fire escape, went for a walk, over-estimated how much you had in you and ran out of steam before you got home. I said I found you at a bus stop a couple blocks away."

Bucky was staring at him open-mouthed. "You…You lied to Ma?"

"I could tell her what really happened," he snapped. It was an empty threat—he'd made his choice, but that didn't mean he felt good about it.

"Why…" Bucky shook his head. "Why would you do that for me?"

"Because…" Steve sighed. Both of them had been raised to accept the consequences of their actions, and both of them knew that they would have been severe for this one. Steve knew Bucky was ready to take it, but this was…This was deeper than just avoiding punishment. "Because if she knew…Yeah, she would be mad, but it would just, it would just hurt her if she knew what happened. And she's had enough of that." Bucky looked down guiltily and Steve continued. "And you…" He took a deep breath. "Hydra messed up a lot of things for you. I didn't want your relationship with your ma to be one more."

Bucky looked back up at him with wide, shining eyes. "Steve…" he began.

Steve pointed a warning finger at Bucky. "Don't you ever make me do that again." He'd had to do it, but it had been one of the worst things Steve had ever done.

Bucky nodded quickly. "I won't. I'm sorry, I…" He swallowed hard a few times, and Steve could tell he was trying not to cry again. "Thank you," he said softly.

Steve nodded and gave him a small smile. He stood up, holding out a hand, which Bucky took to help himself to his feet. Steve checked to make sure the hallway was clear—he could hear Mrs. Barnes and Becky in the kitchen making breakfast—and shuffled him off to the bathroom to get some aspirin and get cleaned up. He went back to their room and got dressed, then stripped the sheets from Bucky's bed, adding his own to the pile to make it look like just a regular laundry day. He tossed his coat and some other clothes into the basket as well, making a note to remember to grab Bucky's clothes when he got out of the shower.

"Morning," he said, making his way into the kitchen.

"Good morning," Mrs. Barnes greeted. She set a plate of eggs on the table and veered over to give him a quick hug before returning to the stove. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," he said, swallowing down a lump of guilt at the memory of lying to her last night.

"How's Bucky?" she asked.

"He's okay," Steve said truthfully. "He's getting a shower." He helped them get the rest of breakfast ready, noticing that Becky kept looking at him suspiciously. "What?" he asked.

"You look like you're up to something," she said softly. Mrs. Barnes was out of earshot over by the table.

"I've been awake for thirty minutes," he told her. "And I've been in my room for twenty-five of those. What could I have gotten up to?"

"I don't know," she admitted, though she didn't seem entirely convinced.

"Stop being so suspicious," he told her. Kid was too smart for her own good. "I think Bucky might be up for going outside for a little bit today," he said, changing the subject. He'd kind of have to be, given what Steve had told everyone else last night. And the fresh air and a little bit of exercise would be good for him. "Where do you think we should go?"

Her attention diverted, Becky excitedly started listing places within easy walking distance of the apartment. A few minutes later, everyone stopped talking as they heard the bathroom door open, craning their necks toward the hall.

"Morning," Bucky said a little sheepishly once he realized everyone was watching him. He hadn't taken any clean clothes into the bathroom with him, and reached down self-consciously to secure the towel around his waist.

There was a beat of silence as everyone stared—even though he hadn't been sleeping, Bucky _had_ still been getting better, but seeing him with his shirt off was just a reminder that he wasn't quite there yet. His ribs and collarbones were still more visible than they should be, there was still some mottled, greenish bruising down the right side of his ribs, and seeing so much of his skin just reinforced how pale he was. "Good morning, sweetheart," Mrs. Barnes said, breaking the silence and sweeping over to give him a hug. He returned it one-armed, keeping one hand on the towel. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Bucky said, and his eyes met Steve's over her shoulder, letting him know he meant it in more ways than one. Steve smiled back. "Um," Bucky continued uncomfortably after she pulled back. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I, uh…"

"It's alright," Mrs. Barnes said. "I know things have been hard for you lately. And I'm glad you're feeling up to moving around more. Just let us know next time, hmm?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he said, color rising in his cheeks. "Sorry," he said again.

She shooed him off to get dressed, and Steve ducked down the hallway to scoop up his clothes from the bathroom floor. He tucked them under some of the other ones in the basket—Steve couldn't imagine what they would've smelled like by now if he _hadn't_ used the Augamenti spell yesterday. He wondered if there was a way to add soap to the spell. He grabbed the change jar and headed down to the laundry room in the basement, making it back upstairs before it was time to eat.

Bucky didn't really want to eat anything, but between his ma and his sister and Steve, they coaxed him into eating some toast and scrambled eggs. It took him a while to get through them, and Mrs. Barnes had to go to work before he was done. Steve and Becky started on the dishes, Becky gently teasing Bucky as they washed. "We could just make lunch," she said to Steve. "It'll be time for that by the time he's done with his toast."

"Do you want me to come over there and throw up on you? 'Cause I'll do it," Bucky warned her. She giggled and flicked water at the back of his head instead of replying, and he tossed a piece of crust at her that missed and hit Steve in the cheek before falling into the dishwater.

After the dishes were clean, Steve went down to get the laundry and hang it up to dry. Bucky was laying on his bare mattress when he came back, staring at the ceiling with half-open eyes. "Buck?" he asked tentatively.

Bucky blinked a few times and drew in a sharp breath, pulling his attention back from the light fixture. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Steve must not have looked like he believed him, because Bucky shook his head and shot him a half-smile. "Really. I'm not thinking about Hydra or anything. I was watching that ant up there."

"That sounds riveting."

Bucky chuckled at that. "Give me a break," he huffed. "I've been awake for almost two whole hours now. Sleeping is…Well, sleeping is hard," he admitted, his smile disappearing. "But so is staying awake."

"You know, I had a thought about that," Steve said, sitting down on his own mattress. Bucky rolled his head to look at him, arching an inquisitive eyebrow. "I was thinking if we can keep you awake all day, you'll be really tired by the time we go to bed, and that might help you sleep better."

Bucky blinked at him. "That's your brilliant plan?"

"I'm not saying it'll fix everything," Steve huffed. "But I think it'll help."

"It's worth a shot," Bucky agreed, not as enthusiastically as Steve would have liked, but he sounded like he was on board. His eyelids started to drop and he blinked rapidly and flailed a little awkwardly to get his arms underneath him so he could push himself up. "If we're doing that, I need to be more vertical," he said. He extended an arm to Steve. "Get me up."

Steve smiled at the casually imperious tone and stood, taking Bucky's arm and pulling him up from where he sat, keeping a firm hand around his arm until he stopped swaying. "Sorry," he grimaced. "That was a little fast, wasn't it?"

"A little," Bucky agreed. He shook his arm free of Steve's grip and started walking toward the living room. "So, what's your plan to keep me awake?"

"Well, at some point today, we're going to go outside."

"We are?" He didn't look excited about the prospect.

"Yes. You're going to actually wear a coat this time, and I think Becky has plans to feed the squirrels." Bucky frowned. "The squirrels are a 'maybe'," Steve continued. "It's a couple of blocks to that little park, and that might be too far. But we're going outside."

"Do we have to go now?"

"I was thinking after lunch."

"Fine," Bucky sighed. They made it to the living room, and once Bucky was settled on the couch under a blanket, they dragged the coffee table closer and played cards for a while. Bucky didn't think he had the mental capacity for Poker, although Becky suggested they should try a hand anyway because she'd stand a better chance of beating him. They went with Go Fish, and Bucky drifted in and out a lot and lost spectacularly, but he stayed awake.

He made it through lunch, but they lost him when it was time to fold the laundry. Becky had taken him his sheets, and he was going to put them back on the bed, but by the time Steve came inside with the rest of the laundry, Bucky had gotten the sheets halfway onto the bed and then passed out face-down on top of them. Becky giggled and Steve shooed her out, contemplating his next move while he hung up shirts and rolled socks. If Bucky was actually sleeping, the logical thing to do would be to let him keep doing it—Steve's plan was just to wear him out so he'd stand a better chance of sleeping too deep for the nightmares, but his body still needed the rest.

The question of whether or not to wake him up was answered for him when Bucky shot upright with a sharp gasp and almost fell off the mattress. "Bucky?" Steve asked, dropping the shirt he was hanging and crossing to sit in front of him. Bucky was staring wide-eyed across the room, his breath coming in short gasps, hitching in his throat when Steve grabbed his shoulders.

"Steve?" he rasped, his eyes landing on Steve's face and coming back into focus.

"Yeah," Steve assured him. "It's me. I gotcha, you're okay."

Bucky's breathing was slowing back down to normal, and he looked around the room, back at Steve, then nodded. Red was rising in his cheeks, and he shook his arms free of Steve's grip and scrubbed his hands down his face. "Sorry," he muttered.

"It's alright," Steve told him. He got why Bucky had been looking so worn out if twenty minutes was all the sleep he was getting before nightmares jarred him back into consciousness again. And he hadn't been particularly loud, either—if Steve had been asleep, he might have missed that. (Although, even seeing how Bucky would have been able to pull off fooling him into thinking he was sleeping alright, Steve still felt guilty for not picking it up.)

Bucky still looked a little embarrassed, but he nodded. Knowing Steve wasn't going to judge him was one thing—letting go of pride was another. Steve understood what that was like too. Just a little.

"So much for your no sleeping plan, huh?" Bucky said.

Steve hitched one shoulder up in a shrug. "Ah, we'll take you for a walk later, wear you out again."

Bucky huffed a semi-amused laugh. "Makes me sound like a puppy."

"Well, I'm sure there are some girls at school who would agree you're just as cute as one," Steve teased.

"Shut up."

"Vicki Marlowe and Helen Thorpe come to mind," he continued.

"Shut _up_."

"Eileen Leahy," he persisted with a smile. "Martha McCrimmon. Donna Price…" He laughed as Bucky picked up his pillow and swung it around to hit him in the face with it. "At least you aimed that one better than your crust this morning."

Bucky hit him again. "You're such a punk," he grumbled, but he was smiling.

"So I've been told," Steve agreed. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "For now." His smile faded. "I don't know how I'm gonna do this, Stevie. I mean, I can't make it, what, half an hour, without freaking out? I'm never gonna—"

"Yes, you are," Steve assured him. "It may take a little while, which I know isn't what you wanna hear, but you'll get there. _We're_ gonna get there," he said emphatically. "I wish it could be okay for you all at once," he said, once again echoing Bucky's words to him from two years ago. "But one day it will, and I'm gonna make sure you get there. Even if I have to drag you."

Bucky huffed a short laugh at that, surprised. "Okay," he said, smiling warmly.

"Okay," Steve repeated. He nodded. "You want help with the sheets?"

"Sure," Bucky replied, shifting off the sheets so they could straighten them. A little smile played at the corners of his mouth. "That's really what all this was," he added. "I just didn't want to make the bed."

Steve laughed. "Well, it looks like it worked."

* * *

_"Okay" might be kind of far away still, but Bucky's headed in the right direction now, and Steve's gonna help him get there. More fluff and recovery yet to come before we get back to the action. See you Friday!_


	35. Tame The Ghosts In My Head

_Alright, Bucky really is on the upswing now-time for some good old fluff and hugging and our boys taking care of each other.  
_

_(The title is a line from a Mumford and Sons song. They have some beautifully poetic lyrics.)_

* * *

Bucky made it through the rest of the day without any trouble, and even though he complained about the cold weather and how far it was to the park, Steve could tell he enjoyed the chance to get out—what Steve had told his ma the night before about him feeling cooped up had not been untrue. (He did not enjoy the fact that, along with his jacket, large coat and gloves, Steve made him wear two scarves. Steve enjoyed that, though. He said it was payback and Bucky mumbled something that was probably very rude behind the layers of yarn that Steve didn't catch.) He was really dragging by the time dinner came around, and he took long enough in the shower that Steve suspected he might have briefly fallen asleep under the hot water, but he made it to almost eight o'clock. Steve figured that was about all he could ask for.

Knowing that Bucky was getting pretty good at the whole quiet nightmare thing, Steve had made him promise before falling asleep that if he woke up and had trouble, he would wake Steve up. Tonight, it turned out to be a moot point, because Steve woke up around one o'clock to the sound of Bucky sobbing in the dark.

Steve flicked on the lamp and jumped out of bed. Bucky was tangled up in his sheets, crying and whimpering but not actually awake yet. Tears were streaming from behind his closed eyes, and Steve realized his whimpers actually had words in them.

"Stop it," Bucky pleaded. "You said…you said…ga-aah! Stop! You said if I would ask…_Please_! Please, stop it. Stop…"

"Bucky," Steve said, not knowing what he was seeing but not wanting him to be trapped there any longer. He put his hand on Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky rolled away from him with a yelp.

"No!" he cried, curling up and half-sitting against the wall. His eyes were open now, but he wasn't here—he was still stuck in the nightmare. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" he said quickly, before starting to claw at the front of his shirt. "Get out! Stop—"

"Bucky!" Steve grabbed his wrists, pulling his hands back before he could hurt himself. He was already bleeding a little—his clawing fingernails had scratched shallow but sharp cuts across his skin. "Bucky!" he said again, giving his arms a little shake, and this time, Bucky looked at him.

"Steve?" he asked softly, blinking away the remnants of sleep. "Steve, I…" The sleep was gone from his eyes, but the fear remained.

"It's okay," Steve said, taking his hands off Bucky's wrists and pulling him forward into a hug. Bucky didn't protest, just sort of folded in against him. "It's alright," Steve told him. "You're at home. You're safe. It's okay."

"He said he would stop," Bucky whispered.

"Who did?" Steve asked gently. Zola, he imagined.

"Zola," Bucky confirmed. "He said he would stop if I asked him to."

"Did he?" Steve didn't know if Bucky was talking about his dream or something that had really happened. At the moment, he supposed it didn't matter.

Bucky shook his head against Steve's shoulder. "I couldn't ask him," he whispered. "My voice, it took my voice away, and I couldn't ask. I tried, Stevie, I tried!"

"Shh," Steve soothed, moving one hand up to cradle the back of Bucky's head. "I know you did. I know." He wondered what Zola had been doing. Wondered if he wanted to know. "It's not your fault," he assured him.

"He just kept digging," Bucky said miserably. "He…" He shuddered. "There's a lot of intestines in there," he said, so softly that Steve had to strain to hear him. "He pulled 'em out sometimes to show me."

It took Steve a second to process that, then he swallowed convulsively to keep from throwing up all over Bucky when he realized what he meant and that he wasn't just talking about his dream. There had been something in his drunken ramble in the alley about Zola digging around inside him, but there had been so much else spilling out then that Steve had tucked it away and forgotten about it. He tightened his grip around Bucky because he didn't know what else to do. "I'm sorry, Bucky," he whispered. He remembered the ugly, swollen stitches across his abdomen that Bucky had curled over protectively when Jim tried to examine them, remembered the Healer saying it had been non-magical surgery, with knives and scalpels, but what Zola did wasn't surgery, that was…that was…mutilation. "I'm so sorry."

Bucky huddled closer into Steve's chest, and Steve tried to slow his breathing down, to be calm to help Bucky be calm. "You're okay now," he whispered. "He's gone. He's gone and he's never going to touch you again." He pulled Bucky back a little, holding him by the shoulders. "You hear me?" he asked, looking into his miserable eyes. "If he tries, then it's going to have to be over my dead body, because he's not getting near you as long as I'm around."

A smile tugged up one corner of Bucky's mouth, and he let out a watery little laugh. "That's such a Little Steve thing to say," he chuckled weakly. Steve wasn't quite sure what he should do with that, but Bucky's smile got wider. "You know I would've believed you if you'd said that a foot and a half ago." Steve huffed a quick laugh at that. "I believe it now too," he finished, faith swimming in his watery eyes. His smile vanished and he swallowed hard, slumping forward again into Steve's chest. "I don't think I can beat this without you, Stevie."

Steve smiled, buoyed by Bucky's trust in him, and rubbed a hand up and down his back. "Good thing you don't have to." He never would.

Bucky nodded, and after a minute he sat up again. His eyes were red but dry, and he looked calmer. "How long did I make it?" he asked.

Steve glanced over at his watch on the table between the beds. "It's almost one-thirty. You got a good five hours in."

"I guess your whole 'keeping me awake' plan worked alright," Bucky said. Five hours wouldn't have been enough sleep even if he was healthy, but it was a far sight better than what he'd been getting.

"We'll try it again tomorrow," Steve said, glad that it had done something. "No midday laundry nap," he added with a smile.

"Boy, you're strict," Bucky said with a little smile. "So what now?"

"What do you need?" Steve asked. Bucky needed more sleep, but if he needed to be awake for a while first, then Steve would stay up with him.

Bucky looked like he was about to brush the question away, but he caught himself and considered for a moment. "I'm still tired," he said at last. "But I think it's gonna take me a while to fall back asleep. _If_ I fall back asleep. Could you…You said you could help distract me if I didn't wanna think about…stuff. Could you just…talk to me?"

"Sure," Steve said, glad Bucky was actually letting him help now. "About anything in particular?"

"No." Bucky shook his head. "I mean, if you'd rather go back to sleep, that's alright, I—"

"Shut up," Steve told him, not unkindly. Bucky needed this, and he was happy to do it. Bucky smiled, blushed a little and nodded, then shifted down until he was horizontal again. Steve moved back over to his own bed and laid down, leaving the lamp on and curling his knees up so he could lay a little farther down the mattress and keep all of Bucky's face in view. "Let's see," he mused. "You remember the Vanishing Cabinet from Second Year?"

"You mean the day you disappeared for eight hours and nearly gave me a heart attack?"

"Yeah," Steve said with a smile. "I don't remember if I told you the reason I got thrown in was because I was running so fast I ran into that red-headed Slytherin kid and knocked him over…"

He'd told Bucky the story before, but it had been almost three years ago. Now Steve told it again, adding in all the details he could remember, like the smell of the sea outside, or the almost musical way the McCrimmon sisters had rolled their R's. He let his thoughts and his words wander, musing about dragons for a while after mentioning Katie's burn scar before getting back to the narrative at hand, or saying that they should go to an actual beach sometime, out in the countryside or down south where it was warmer. He purposefully didn't look at his watch, not wanting to keep track of what time it was and start worrying about that. By the time he was done with the story and all its details and footnotes and meanderings, Bucky's eyes had drifted shut again. Steve talked a little longer just to make sure, then turned off the lamp with a smile and let his own eyes close.

"'Night, Buck," he whispered.

* * *

Bucky had been starting to wonder if he was ever going to feel normal again. Hydra had messed with the inside of his head but good, and he'd been spiraling down since he got home, unable to pull out of the tailspin. But Steve had caught him. Steve had caught him and was refusing to let him crash and burn, and normal was…well, it was a long way off still, but at least it was in sight again. Most of the time. And when Bucky couldn't see it, Steve could. And he was keeping Bucky on course.

Of course, that didn't mean that everything was fine. Bucky was still terrified to go to sleep. He needed the sleep. He wanted the sleep. And he was feeling better now that he was getting more of it. He just…It was so easy to feel pathetic—he was fifteen years old; he should be able to shake a few bad dreams. But he couldn't. Night after night, he woke up shaking in a cold sweat, and sometimes he cried, and sometimes he screamed, and sometimes he forgot where he was. But night after night, Steve would appear out of the darkness and chase it all away, and he would hold on to Bucky and bring him back home. And in those moments, even though he was at his weakest, it was hard to feel pathetic. Because Steve didn't think he was. And Bucky always trusted Steve.

They'd been home for about two weeks now. It had been just over a week since the bar and Bucky's own version of being yelled at in the bathroom. He'd been getting better since then—he could get around the house without leaning on anything, and though he still felt a little nauseous around food, he hadn't actually thrown up in five days. Being vertical didn't make him dizzy any more, and he could read without making his head want to explode. Higher level concentration was still generally beyond him, but he was blaming that and the thrashings at Scrabble he kept receiving from Becky on the fact that he was still pretty tired. Steve's plan of keeping him awake all day _was_ helping with the nightmares, but he was still drifting a lot during the day.

"That's not a word, Jay," Becky informed him, nudging away the tiles he was trying to lay down.

"How is 'muffin' not a word?" he asked.

"Muffin's a word, but you need an 'f' for that. Two of them," she said.

Bucky blinked down at the tiles. Oh, that wasn't an 'f', was it? That was an 'l' that was upside down. He looked back at his collection of letters. "I thought I had some."

"You did two turns ago," she replied, pointing at the word 'fife' that he'd played earlier. She looked him over, evaluating. "You need a nap, don't you?"

Bucky shook his head. Becky had found just the right balance of teasing him when his mind wandered and genuine concern, and it managed to be simultaneously sweet and annoying. "You're trying to get me in trouble with Steve, aren't you?"

Becky snickered. "Alright. You wanna go for a walk? The cold air should help you wake up some."

"Yeah, okay." He pushed himself away from the table and began the process of gathering all the clothes he would need to go outside. He grumbled about the layers on principle, but given that he got chilly inside the house, it wasn't like he was going to go out and face a Brooklyn December without them. "Really?" he asked, coming back to the living room with all his layers and seeing Becky standing by the door holding out his own Hufflepuff scarf and one of her Ravenclaw ones. Yes, the layers were good, but the two-scarf thing was a little much.

"Steve says you have to wear two," she informed him in a sing-song voice.

"Yeah, well, Steve's not here, is he?" Bucky retorted, grabbing the yellow and black scarf. Steve had been sent out with the grocery list; a task deemed too labor-intensive for Bucky at this point.

Becky grinned and tossed her scarf up to loop around his neck. He batted it away and she arched a warning eyebrow. "I'll tell Steve on you," she threatened.

"You're a mean little Munchkin," Bucky glowered, but he put the scarf on. It wasn't a hill he was willing to die on. "Happy?" he asked.

"Ecstatic," she replied. "C'mon."

He was still a little shaky on stairs, but he was moving pretty good once they hit the ground. He'd been able to walk a little farther each day, and if he paced himself, he could do three, maybe four blocks before he needed to sit down for a while. Becky did most of the talking while they were out, letting Bucky save his breath. He enjoyed her happy chatter, the crunch of the thin layer of fresh snow under his boots, the way the sun shone off the ice on the fountain in the park, and even the sharp sting of cold air in his lungs, but not nearly as much as he enjoyed the fact that he was moving around on his own and he was outside in the world again. It was moments like these where he thought maybe he could see what Steve saw—that place where he was actually okay again. Safe in this little, familiar part of the world, Hydra seemed so much farther away.

They made it back home at the same time Steve did. He waited for them to go up the stairs first, under the pretense that he could keep Bucky from going too far if he slipped, but Bucky knew it was because Steve still sometimes took stairs and doors like he was still tiny and made the occasional miscalculation—Steve had fallen down these stairs at least twice. Bucky thought it made him a very good friend that he had not laughed either time. Externally. Much.

Once the groceries were all in, it was time to start dinner. The past couple of days, Bucky had been feeling up to helping, although everyone still made him sit down while he did. He settled himself at the table with a pile of potatoes and a knife to start peeling. It was a very large pile of potatoes. Steve ate an awful lot now, which made sense, because he was huge. Bucky's ma still thought it was amusing, although she _had_ had to threaten to whack him with a spatula if he didn't stop apologizing for increasing the grocery bill.

After dinner, they sat around the living room and listened to the radio. This was generally the part of the day where Bucky had the hardest time staying awake. The lights were lower, the room was warm, and he would be wrapped up in a blanket or two down at one end of the couch. It was very cozy. Steve had said it would be fine if he _did_ drift off—it was night, after all—but Bucky wanted to make it all the way to bed time. It seemed like a little thing, but being really tired when he went to bed really did help. He would much rather wake up once or twice in terror than have it happen all night.

In an effort to help him stay awake in the evenings, Becky had taken it upon herself to teach him how to knit. He'd been given no choice in the matter. Thus far, he wasn't proving to be particularly skillful, but it did provide enough for him to concentrate on to keep his brain awake. Steve, thoughtfully, made no comments about him learning such an unusual skill, nor did he mock the pathetic creations he made. Bucky appreciated that.

He managed to complete a couple of rows of stitches tonight—he still wasn't sure exactly what it was she was having him make. It was probably a scarf. Possibly a sock. Becky, while not actually saying anything, was being judgmental enough about whatever it was with her glances and the little noises she made that Bucky eventually threatened to stab her with one of the knitting needles, earning him a smack on the head from his ma and a poorly-concealed laugh from Steve. They all went to bed not long after.

Though he dreaded going to sleep, Bucky found, at least at the beginning of the night when he was tired, that it was easy enough to do. Tonight was no exception, and he was out not long after getting horizontal. He snuggled down under the extra blankets that used to be on Steve's bed back when he was tiny, mumbling goodnight to Steve.

When he woke up, it took him several seconds to realize that the noise he heard was his own voice screaming, and it took several more to figure out how to stop. He was dimly aware of someone else being there, and he hoped it was Steve and not Zola, but he curled up into a tight, defensive little ball just in case. He was shaking so hard, it was hard to get his muscles to do what he wanted, and that happened a lot with Zola, the not moving. Was he back? Or had he even gone? He thought he remembered Steve rescuing him. He thought he remembered going home. But he saw a lot of things that weren't real, and he didn't know how to tell. He may just still be strapped to that table, seeing more things that had never happened and bleeding and crying in the dark.

Except…It wasn't dark, was it? Even with his eyes closed, he could see through his eyelids the glow of a soft yellow light. Zola's light had always been harsh and white. There were hands touching him that were large and warm and gentle. Zola's hands had been small and cold and they always hurt. And there was a voice…He realized the voice had been speaking for some time, and he forced himself to listen to it. It was deep and worried and trying to sound like it wasn't and so very familiar. "Steve?" he asked shakily.

"Yeah, it's me," the voice said warmly. "I'm here, Buck, I'm right here. It's okay. I've got you."

"Steve," Bucky said again, not a question this time.

"Yeah." A hand squeezed his arm gently. "You think you can open your eyes?"

Gingerly, Bucky blinked his eyes open. It wasn't Zola's lab. It wasn't that dark little corner of hell. It was his room. His room, in his house, and that was Steve right there in front of him, and he was… "Why'm I on the floor?" Bucky asked.

"You fell off the bed," Steve replied. He nodded back at Bucky's bed, and Bucky could see the sheets flowing over the side where they had followed him down. One was still wrapped around his ankle. "You started making noise, and right when I turned the light on, you just kind of flailed up and off the side before I could catch you. Are you okay?"

Bucky nodded, pushing himself up so he was sitting. He knew Steve was just asking if he'd hurt himself, and he hadn't.

"What were you dreaming about?" Steve asked him cautiously. He knew Bucky didn't like that question because he didn't like answering it—having the dream once was bad enough without reliving it while he was awake—but Bucky had to admit that the dreams lost some of their bite when he could talk about them.

It took a couple of swallows for him to get his throat working, because he couldn't talk about this one. "I don't know," he said. Those were the worst dreams. The ones that left his heart pounding and his body shaking, images and sounds and touches and ghosts of memories that he couldn't put words to. It was all too hazy to remember, but the all-enveloping fear it left coursing through his veins was more than vivid enough.

Steve nodded sadly. "Okay," he said softly. Bucky had tried to explain all that to him last time he'd had one of these. He didn't know how good a job he'd done, but Steve seemed to get it. He extended a hand. "You want to get off the floor?"

Bucky nodded, and Steve took his hand and got to his feet, pulling Bucky up with him. Bucky kicked the sheet off his foot and got back into bed, pulling the blankets back up even though he knew it wasn't the cold that was making him shake. Steve sat down next to him, leaning against the headboard, and Bucky leaned over onto his shoulder. His head rose and fell with Steve's chest as he breathed, and if he shifted just right, he could hear his heartbeat. He couldn't quite put into words why that made him feel better, but it did. It was like an anchor that kept him in the real world.

He didn't want to talk, and he wasn't sure how well he could right now anyway, so Steve talked instead. Bucky's attention wandered several times, but it was easier to pull it back when Steve's voice was there. When he'd laid there at night pretending he was asleep, his mind had wandered to some bad places, and there hadn't been anything to help him find his way back. It still rankled his pride somewhat, admitting that he needed this help, but it was so much better this way that he couldn't really bring himself to care. When he pulled his attention back this time, Steve was talking about the best way to feed a salamander, and he chuckled. Steve stopped talking and looked down at him, arching a curious eyebrow.

"Why are you talking about flammable magical reptiles?" Bucky wondered. Not that he really cared what Steve talked about. But it was a little weird.

"They're amphibians," Steve corrected. "If you'd been listening, you would know that." He did not sound annoyed that Bucky hadn't been paying attention.

"I stand corrected," Bucky said, and Steve smiled.

"It was what popped into my head," he said.

Bucky supposed odd things did pop into one's head in the middle of the night. What he would give to have his dreams be strange in _that_ way. "That was from almost a year ago in Care of Magical Creatures. How do you remember that?"

"I take good notes," Steve replied smugly.

Bucky smiled. "Right." He yawned. He wasn't sure how long Steve had been talking, but he might be ready to try sleeping again. He nodded at Steve, and Steve nodded back, clapped him on the shoulder, and moved back to his bed. "Thanks," Bucky said.

"You're welcome," Steve replied warmly. The lamp clicked as he switched it off again. Almost immediately, it clicked again and came back on. "What is it?" Steve asked. Evidently he'd heard the involuntary choking sound Bucky had made when the light went out.

Bucky shook his head. He still didn't remember what he'd dreamed—he didn't think he wanted to—but as soon as the darkness rolled in, it brought back that nameless, crushing terror that Steve had chased away.

Steve moved back over and sat down on Bucky's mattress, laying a hand on his shoulder. "It was a really bad one, wasn't it? You want me to talk about salamanders some more?" he offered.

Bucky managed a weak smile at that, but shook his head. Steve could talk as long as he wanted, but on a night like tonight, it would just come back when he was done.

"Okay," Steve said. "You want me to stay over here?" he asked. He nodded down at Bucky's bed. "It'll be more crowded than it was when I was thirteen, but we can fit."

Something warm expanded in Bucky's chest, pushing some of the fear away. He knew what Steve was doing—by reminding Bucky that he'd done it for him before, Steve was taking away the potential for any embarrassment if Bucky said yes. And for a moment he was tempted. But he didn't think he needed it. Not because he was trying to tough it out, but because he thought he might actually be okay.

"I'm alright," he told him. "But thank you," he said sincerely, hoping Steve knew how much he appreciated the offer. He was still drowsy, riding the wave of calm that Steve had created earlier, and back in the light, it was settling again after the darkness had rippled through it. He thought it shouldn't be too hard to fall asleep again, but…"Just, um…" It had been hard at first, vocalizing what he'd needed without feeling embarrassed by it. This request was harder than anything he'd asked for yet, but it would be okay. It would. He trusted Steve. "Can we leave the light on?" he asked, wincing at the way his voice cracked.

Steve made no comment about the tight, high words or the childish request, just smiled warmly and nodded. "Sure," he said, squeezing Bucky's shoulder. He looked him over, making sure that was all he needed, then nodded again.

"Thank you," Bucky whispered, feeling red rise in his cheeks as Steve moved back over to his bed again.

"No problem," Steve said, and he sounded like he meant it. He smiled again, and then, in a move that made Bucky wonder again if he couldn't read minds now after all, he rolled over and pulled his blanket up over his face to block out the light, making a point of believing Bucky when he said he'd be alright by not staring at him until he fell asleep.

Bucky huffed a soft laugh. "G'night, Steve."

"Night," came the slightly muffled reply.

And, safe from the memories that came slithering through the dark and soothed by the rhythmic sound of his friend breathing, Bucky _was_ alright. And he fell asleep again.

* * *

Back when Bucky had been helping Steve out of the pit he'd fallen into after his ma died, Steve had sometimes wondered where Bucky got the patience to not get frustrated with how long it was taking. Now that it was his turn, though, he thought he understood. How fast Bucky was getting better didn't matter. What mattered was that he was.

It was the week before Christmas. Steve had somehow found himself surprised that the holiday was approaching. He knew they'd come home for Christmas break, but given everything that was happening, it hadn't felt particularly Christmas-y. Bucky was doing a lot better, though. He was still exhausted by the end of the day, but he wasn't having trouble staying awake when the sun was up anymore. He was walking around without leaning on anything and at something close to his normal speed, and had even gone out with Steve the day before to get groceries and made it all the way there and back without getting winded or needing to take a break. He was eating better, and his color was coming back. He still looked kind of skinny, but it was much less noticeable than before. His nightmares were still pretty bad, but between the two of them, they'd figured out how to help him calm down and get back to a place where he could sleep again afterward. The dark circles under his eyes had finally gone away.

Steve woke up not long after sunrise, and before he opened his eyes, he got a sense that something was different this morning. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see that Bucky wasn't in his bed. That was odd. They'd shared a room for four and a half years, and Steve thought he could count on one hand the number of times Bucky had gotten up before he did. Then he noticed that the spot where Bucky's coat should have been hanging by the door was empty, and his heart started beating a little faster. He hadn't…He hadn't run off again, had he?

"Calm down, Steve," came Bucky's voice from a direction it took him a few seconds to place. "I can hear you freaking out from here. I'm fine."

Steve whirled his head around and finally figured out that Bucky sounded like he was in the closet because his voice was coming through the window next to it. He stuck his head out to see Bucky sitting on the fire escape, wrapped up in his missing coat. "What are you doing out here?"

Bucky shrugged. "Sitting. Thinking. Stop looking at me like that, I'm not moping or anything, and I haven't been out here all night. It's been, like, twenty minutes."

That made him feel a little better. Still, it was freezing out here. "You coming back in?"

Bucky shook his head. "Not yet."

Steve pulled his head back in the window, grabbed the stack of blankets from Bucky's bed, and crawled out to join him. Bucky smirked slightly when he cracked his head on the window sill, but made no comment. Steve kept one of the blankets for himself and shoved the rest at Bucky. Bucky opened his mouth to protest, but Steve cut him off. "It's freezing out here. Put 'em on, or I'll shove you back through that window."

"Punk," Bucky spat, but he took the blankets.

"Jerk," Steve replied, giving his shoulder a shove. "So, what's up?" he asked after a minute.

Bucky was silent for a moment. "I was just thinking about stuff. You know, it's two more weeks until we got back to school, and then this whole thing starts up again." He sniffed thoughtfully. "You said Phillips asked you about working for him? Secret S.S.R. missions and stuff?"

"Yeah," Steve said. He looked over at Bucky curiously. "You're not gonna try to talk me out of it, are you?"

Bucky huffed a short laugh. "No. We had the whole Steve-joining-the-Army talk already. I mean, we could do it again if you want, but I feel like we settled it when you were tiny. No, I meant, you're doing this stuff, and I want in."

Steve bit back an automatic protest. He hadn't actually given a lot of thought to what would happen when they got back to school, but he realized he'd sort of been thinking Bucky would be sitting the rest of the fight out. He'd certainly done his time.

Bucky narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You're trying to figure out how to talk me out of it, aren't you?"

Steve blushed a little. "No. Not necessarily. I just…Are you sure you're up for it?"

"I am," Bucky replied firmly. "Or, well, I will be," he amended. "I'm not quite back to fighting form yet, but it won't take me much longer to get there. I figure, by the time you're done with the training Phillips has for you, I'll be good to go."

That hadn't really been what Steve had meant. "I, uh, that wasn't quite…"

"I know what you meant," Bucky said. "And, yeah, I'm scared. A hell of a lot more scared than I was when I first joined up, because I know what they can do now. But, Steve, I know what they can do now. I can't let them keep doing it to other people, and I'm pissed that they did it to me. When I joined up at first, I did it because it was the right thing to do. It's still the right thing to do, but it's personal now too." He drew in a deep breath. "What they did to me, it…You said I wasn't broken, and this is how I prove it. To them and to me. They didn't beat me, but I can beat them. This is my fight, Stevie. Don't you try to keep me out of it."

"I won't," Steve said, and he meant it. He knew what it was like to have people think you were too weak to fight for what mattered to you, and he'd never meant to do that to Bucky. He smiled at him. "Phillips did say I would need a team."

"Well, yeah," Bucky replied. "Somebody's gotta keep you from doing stupid things like breaking into Hydra factories by yourself."

"Some backup would have been nice," Steve admitted.

Bucky grinned and bumped his shoulder. "Well, now you've got it."

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Though he was still a little concerned about Bucky, the cold didn't seem to be bothering him under his layers of blankets. Bucky looked over at him thoughtfully. "So, how are you doing?" he asked.

"What? I'm fine," Steve replied, confused by the question.

"No, I…Look, you've been Big Steve for, like, a month now. I know you told me how it happened, and the stuff with Erskine and Phillips and all, but it was all really…" He pursed his lips as he searched for the right word. "Technical," he decided. "Lots of facts, but…" He leaned over and tapped a finger to the side of Steve's head. "Tell me how it really happened. Everything's kind of been about me for a while now, but you don't have to figure stuff out by yourself either."

Steve blinked in surprise, then smiled softly, swallowing down an unexpected lump in his throat. He hadn't minded that everything had been about Bucky lately, because that was what Bucky needed, but when he did have time to think about himself, there _was_ a lot he hadn't really unpacked. And Bucky cared. He'd probably been waiting to see if Steve would bring it up on his own, but he hadn't, so he asked.

"Uh, well…" Steve wasn't really sure where to start. There suddenly seemed to be an awful lot in there. He finally started with how weird it was being big now, how he still kept catching himself and thinking he couldn't do stuff, how amazing it felt to be healthy and how there was this quiet little lurking fear that it was going to wear off. It felt a little uncomfortable, making things about him, but once he got started, it was a relief to get it all out. He talked about feeling guilty that Mrs. Barnes had had to buy him all new clothes and shoes, and how it cost more to feed him now. He hadn't really thought about how taking the serum would affect the other people in his life. Bucky listened, and occasionally chimed in with a question or an assurance, but mostly just let Steve talk.

It was easy to transition from how it felt to be big to how he'd gotten that way, and he talked a little bit about the process and admitted that it had been pretty scary and that it had hurt. He talked about the assassin, Clemson, and how he'd been holding on to him when he died and how he hadn't been sure how to feel about it. He kept pushing back thinking about Erskine, but he couldn't avoid it anymore, and there were more than a few tears and the sun had risen up over the top of the buildings by the time he got it all out.

It was different, Erskine dying, than it had been with his ma. (Though lately he had found himself revisiting some of the old memories and bad dreams from when he'd lost her.) His ma had been killed by Hydra too, but she'd been sick, and though it seemed so fast, he'd still known it was coming. Erskine had just been abruptly alive and then not. And Steve…He just kept losing the people who cared about him. His ma was, well, she was his ma, and Erskine had always been more like an uncle, or maybe even a father than he had a teacher. He'd listened to him and taken him seriously, and though he hadn't ignored his shortcomings, he hadn't focused on them either, instead finding ways to encourage him and help him work around them. He'd been like…He'd been like Bucky. Someone who'd valued Steve for who he was, and not what he could or couldn't do. Steve didn't have a lot of people like that in his life. And now he had even less.

"Sorry," Steve said at last. He wiped at his eyes. Bucky had snaked an arm over his shoulders, and he was leaning on Bucky now just like he used to, marveling a little that he still fit so well. (Although his weight was pressing Bucky into the railing on the side of the fire escape.)

"Don't be," Bucky said as Steve sat up. "What, I'm the only one around here who needs someone to hold him together?"

That surprised a laugh out of Steve. And he got what Bucky was telling him—he'd been making such a big deal about Bucky not needing to be embarrassed about needing help that it made him kind of a hypocrite if he didn't apply it to himself too. "Thanks," he said softly. He felt lighter now, more free of the weight that had been hanging on his shoulders that he hadn't actually noticed until it was gone.

Bucky nodded, smiling back. "Anytime, pal," he said. He craned his neck back to look at the window above their heads. "You want breakfast?"

Steve nodded and got to his feet, shivering as his legs were exposed to the cold as he stood. "Yeah. And something hot to drink." Mrs. Barnes and Becky had probably eaten already, and Steve felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn't helped with breakfast like he usually did, but he knew they would have left food out for the two of them.

"Good," Bucky agreed. "It's cold out here."

Steve chuckled. "You're the one who snuck out onto the fire escape at dawn."

"Well, I was gonna lie there in bed and do my thinking," Bucky said, clambering back through the window. "But you were snoring. Sounded like a jackhammer."

Steve didn't always snore, but when he did, Bucky had always leveled that same accusation at him, even when he'd been little. "Told you I didn't change that much," Steve laughed.

* * *

_Hope this leaves you with some warm fuzzies for the weekend. Drop me a line and let me know what you're thinking!_


	36. Christmas Gifts

_Christmas time! Time for some celebrating, and maybe even a holiday surprise...  
_

* * *

It was Christmas Eve. The tree was trimmed, the walls and windows were decorated with paper chains and snowflakes, and the whole house smelled vaguely of cinnamon. The children had gone to bed, and Winnifred Barnes was sitting on the couch, wrapped up in her bathrobe and holding a cup of coffee that was starting to get cold. All the lights were off except the ones on the tree, and she was enjoying looking at them. They put her in a thoughtful mood, and she was feeling warm and content. She had a lot to be thankful for this Christmas.

A noise caught her attention, and she turned her head to see Bucky hovering uncertainly in the door from the hall. "Oh, um, hi, Ma," he said. "Sorry, I didn't know anyone was still in here."

"It's alright. Come in," she said, waving a hand and beckoning him forward. "Is everything alright?" While he'd been getting better—he looked _so_ much better, strong and healthy again—she knew he was still having trouble sleeping. Her heart ached for her little boy and the monsters lurking in the corners of his mind that he was trying to fight away.

He nodded, smiling reassuringly. "Yeah, I just forgot this," he explained, holding up a badly-wrapped package that sparkled in the light from the tree. He'd never been very good at wrapping presents. He gestured at the other gifts stacked under the tree. "I missed it with the others."

He moved forward to place it under the tree, and she patted the couch cushion next to her. "Come sit with me, sweetheart."

He put down the gift and joined her on the couch. She tugged out the blanket from behind her and unfurled it over them both. He shifted down a little to lean on her shoulder. "How are you doing, Ma?" he asked.

She smiled and looped an arm around him, hugging him closer. "I'm doing just fine, sweetie." She pressed a kiss to his forehead. It hurt her heart to see how much older his eyes looked now, but her little boy was still there too, and she smiled and leaned her head to rest on top of his. "Having you home and in one piece is the best Christmas present I could ask for. What about you?" she asked. "You've been looking so much better. But how are you really feeling?" She knew he had nightmares, and she knew he didn't like to talk about them. He got uncomfortable and embarrassed if she brought them up, so she tried to phrase her questions in ways he'd be more willing to answer. She would have been much more straightforward if she hadn't known that Steve was helping him work through them.

She did wonder sometimes if they thought she didn't know, or if it simply hadn't occurred to either of them. A mother's ears were attuned to children making frightened noises in the dark, but she didn't even need that on the nights that he screamed. She never failed to rush down the hall to his room, but she always stopped with her hand on the door handle. Because no matter how fast she ran, Steve was always there, already offering comfort and whispering soothing words. She would listen through the door, crying silently for how hurt her baby was and for how there was no way for her or anyone to make it better except to hold him while he cried. At the same time, it soothed her soul to hear the words that Steve whispered, full of compassion and concern and utterly devoid of judgement. Steve had saved her little boy once already, and he just kept doing it. It hurt a little bit that Bucky was growing up and didn't need her for that anymore, but as long as he had someone who could, it was really alright.

"I'm okay, Ma," he told her. "I really am. I'm feeling…I'm feeling more like me again."

"I'm glad to hear that," she said, and though she knew he was still struggling, she believed him. In the past couple of weeks, his old spirit had started showing again, replacing that frightening lost look that had been lingering in his eyes. He smiled more, moved a little more confidently, and started telling jokes again. He'd stopped jumping when people came up behind him, and he didn't move like everything hurt anymore. Hydra may have beaten him down, but he was getting back up again.

They sat quietly for a little while, just holding on to each other and looking at the lights on the tree. After a while, she started to hum, not paying attention to what it was at first, but recognizing it as a lullaby she used to sing to Bucky. She looked down at him when he sniffed, and her breath caught in her throat at the sight of a thin line of tears trickling down his cheek, glistening in the soft light.

"Oh, sweetheart, what's wrong?" she asked.

For a moment, he didn't say anything, just pressed his lips together in a tight line and shook his head. "Nothing. It—" The words caught in his throat and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears from his eyes. "There was a guy," he started softly. "When Hydra…had me. The cage they kept us in at night, there was one of the other guys who used to hum that every night while we were all trying to go to sleep." He sniffed again. "It always made me think about you."

"Oh," she breathed, her heart clenching in her chest. "Sweetie, I'm so sorry! Oh, I didn't know. I didn't mean to…" She was on the brink of crying herself now, sick at the thought that she'd sent him back to such a painful memory.

"It's okay," he told her. "I don't…" He swallowed hard and sniffed again, then looked up at her, eyes red but dry. He blinked sadly, hopefully, and in that moment, her sweet, brave, grown-up boy was four years old again. "Please don't stop," he whispered.

"Alright," she said softly. She kissed the side of his face and wrapped both arms around him, pulling him in to lie against her chest. She started singing quietly, and she felt him draw in a few shaky breaths, then felt his heartbeat start to slow down as his breathing evened out. A happy tear slipped down her cheek a few minutes later when he nuzzled his head into her chest and made that same, soft snuffling noise he would make when he was little right before he fell asleep. She stopped singing long enough to kiss his hair, then cinched her arms more tightly around him and kept singing, holding on to the boy she'd almost lost.

* * *

Bucky fidgeted with his tie, earning him a smack on the hand from his ma like that move always did. It wasn't that he minded wearing a tie, but his Sunday shirt was itchy, and the tie just made it worse. At least he was more comfortable than Steve, whose nice shirt was brand new and still stiff with starch. That's what he got for outgrowing Bucky.

They'd had breakfast and opened presents, and the room was tidied up and the furniture pushed back, waiting for everyone to show up. Bucky was curious about what anybody had told the Garcias about Steve. The Kowalskis and Mrs. O'Brien, being wizards and witches, accepted the story of a magic potion with little difficulty, though they hadn't been given much of the rest of the story. The Garcias, though, were sure to wonder. Teenagers did go through growth spurts, but without magic, the degree to which Steve had shot up was hard to explain.

Bucky's ma was humming around the kitchen with nervous energy. She seemed like she was waiting for something, and it seemed a little weird that she would be so excited for people to show up that she saw all the time. The Garcias arrived before he could ask, and things got much noisier as their little ones burst through the door. He and Steve moved to help Carmella and Elian and their parents carry the food in. After a round of warm holiday greetings, it would seem that, alright, they were just saying that Steve had finally gotten taller.

Mrs. O'Brien arrived alone, and Steve helped her up the stairs. He blushed when she patted him on the cheek and said he'd always been a nice boy, but he was so big and handsome now. Bucky snickered and Steve glared at him.

The Kowalskis finally arrived, their triplets adding to the general chaos of the room. "Winnifred," Mrs. Kowalski called, hovering in the door. "We found another guest on our way over. Hopefully you can find another chair."

His ma's breath caught in her throat, and Bucky opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but felt his own breath leave him in a rush as Mrs. Kowalski stepped out of the doorway and the 'other guest' was revealed.

The whole room went dead silent, then Becky shot across the room in a streak of gingham squealing, "Papa!" She leaped into her father's arms, and George Barnes just had time to drop his bag and fling them out to catch her.

Bucky realized his mouth was hanging open, and he snapped it shut and hurried after her. "Welcome home, Pop," he said, flinging his arms around them both.

"You too," his pop whispered, taking one arm off of Becky to pull him in closer and kiss the side of his face, and Bucky's eyes watered happily and he hugged him back.

His pop let them go and then he was grabbing their ma, lifting her off the floor and kissing her soundly. Elian wolf-whistled loudly and the spell of silence on the room was broken as everyone laughed. (Above the laughter, Bucky heard Carmella smack Elian on the shoulder and start chastising him in Spanish, and Bucky laughed harder.)

Everyone was crowding around Bucky's pop, clapping him on the shoulders and welcoming him back. He hugged them all in turn, pausing when he got to Steve, his eyes widening. "Merlin's beard, I heard you'd gotten big," he said with a low whistle, looking him up and down. "They weren't exaggerating." Steve blushed, and Bucky's pop pulled him in for a bear hug. "It's good to see you, son," he said. Bucky was standing close enough to hear him whisper, "Thank you," before letting Steve go.

Bucky's ma was smiling warmly, watching as everyone welcomed him home. Bucky arched an eyebrow at her suspiciously. "You knew about this, didn't you?" he asked, suddenly realizing what her nervous energy in the kitchen had been about.

She smiled. "The telegram came yesterday while you were all downstairs getting the laundry. I didn't want to spoil the surprise."

Bucky laughed, then sobered as he watched his pop make his way around the room. "Why is he limping?" he asked worriedly. "Did he get hurt?"

She nodded. "That's why they sent him home. It was an Honorable Discharge for medical reasons."

Bucky pondered over that a minute. "Does that mean he's not going back out?"

"No. He's staying here."

That was good, but at the same time, worrying news. "He's got to be hurt pretty bad, though, if they didn't think they could fix him up enough to keep fighting."

His ma nodded. "It was a bad one. They were able to keep him walking, but they couldn't repair all the damage." Bucky's eyes widened worriedly, and she tugged him over for a hug. "Don't worry, sweetie. We're going to St. Clement's after the holiday weekend. The Healers there should be able to get everything back in order. It wasn't a magical wound," she assured him. "Just a bullet." That made him feel a little better, but he still hated for his pop to be hurt.

Everyone settled down to lunch, and after dessert, they turned on some Christmas music and danced in the living room. Bucky's pop sat out all the fast ones. Bucky was able to do some of his swing dance moves with Becky, although, much to her disappointment, he didn't pick her up and twirl her. He wasn't sure if he could do that without dropping her yet. The little Garcias and Kowalskis ran around dancing wildly and getting underfoot. Bucky noticed Carmella shooting glances over at Steve, but he only danced with Becky or Bucky's ma. Bucky found it awfully funny that he still seemed to be as clueless about girls as ever, and also that the super-serum had not improved his dancing abilities in the slightest.

After everyone left later that evening, they sat around in the living room listening to Christmas music and snacking on leftovers. Bucky's pop wanted to hear all about everything he'd missed—their term at school, the sort of missions Bucky had gone on, what exactly had happened to Steve to make him so enormous, and, of course, the rescue mission. Bucky noticed that his pop didn't press him for details of what had happened after Hydra caught him, and it hit him like a lightning bolt that his pop had been out fighting a war and he'd probably seen some stuff he didn't want to talk about too. It was a painful realization, but also, well, it was kind of comforting. Not that Steve or Becky or his ma couldn't understand, but his pop—even if he hadn't been a prisoner of war—his pop understood because he'd been there.

A couple of times over the course of the next week, Bucky would get up in the middle of the night and find his pop sitting in the living room, staring thoughtfully into the dark. He'd come and sit beside him, and they would talk—not about the bad things either of them had seen, but about baseball, or funny stories from their units, or even Bucky's upcoming O.W.L. exams. They didn't have to talk about it—just knowing that there was someone who got it, who _really_ got it, Bucky found he didn't feel so alone in his struggle. Of course, Bucky knew that he'd never actually been alone, but his pop was taking the same journey. He'd always looked up to his pop, and if his pop could do this…If his pop could do this, then Bucky could do it too.

* * *

.


	37. Back To School And Something Like Normal

_Bucky's back in pretty good shape for the most part, so it's time to see what a new term might hold._

* * *

The alarm clock jangled and Steve frowned, not having missed the noise over the holiday. There was a sleepy, mumbled curse from a few feet away and Steve chuckled. Bucky hadn't missed the clock either. Steve sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and turned on the lamp, earning another series of unhappy noises from Bucky. "Come on, man," he said, swallowing down a yawn. "We got a train to catch."

"Go away," Bucky grumbled, pulling his pillow over his head to block out the light.

Steve stood up, reached over and yanked the covers off of Bucky's bed, making him gasp in the cold air. Bucky sat up and glared. "We do this every time we leave for Hogwarts," Steve said.

Bucky glowered. He grabbed for the blankets Steve was holding, and Steve pulled them back out of reach. "I hate you."

"Get up," Steve replied, unperturbed. Seriously, every time.

"It's so _early_," Bucky groaned, but he stood up and pulled off his pajama top. "The sun's not even awake yet, Steve. Why do I have to be awake?"

Steve ignored Bucky's whining and got dressed, folding up his pajamas and putting them in his trunk. "Hey," he said, as something occurred to him while he was fishing under the bed for his socks. "You didn't wake me up last night." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Were you lying there not sleeping again?"

Bucky opened his mouth to protest, then stopped, puzzled. "No," he said, sounding surprised. "I…" A smile crept across his face. "I didn't have any nightmares last night." He huffed a surprised laugh. "I actually…I didn't have any nightmares," he said again, like he wanted to make sure.

Steve smiled. "Really? Buck, that's great!"

"Yeah," Bucky agreed, still smiling. He frowned. "That doesn't mean they're gone, though, does it? I mean, just one night…They could come back."

"Yeah," Steve allowed. And they probably would. "Still," he continued. "On again and off again's gotta be better than all the time, right?"

"I guess," Bucky said.

"It is," Steve assured him. "Same thing happened to me, after ma. On again and off again eventually turns into 'off'."

Bucky didn't say anything, but he nodded, and he looked like that information cheered him up. "Hey, um, about that, though…"

"About what?"

"The nightmares and stuff," Bucky clarified. "When they do come back, I…" He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "This whole thing we've been doing, with the, the talking, or you sitting over here with me, or leaving the light on…It really helps. I mean, it helps a lot, I…" He shifted a little awkwardly. "There's gonna be more people in the room now, and I don't…"

Steve nodded. He'd been thinking about that. "Well, I think Jacques and Dave are gonna get where you're coming from," he said. They hadn't been taken off by Zola, but they'd been caught by Hydra too. "But, if you wake up and need me to talk to you or hang on to you or anything, please don't think you can't ask for it. We can go sit out in the common room if we need to so we won't keep anybody up, but I'm gonna keep helping you as long as you need it. Doesn't matter who else is around."

"Are you sure?" Bucky asked, like he was afraid he might be asking too much.

Steve smiled reassuringly. "You did it for me," he reminded him.

They made it to the train with time to spare, and got on board after lots of hugs and admonitions to be careful. They got a compartment down on the end with the rest of the guys, and everyone said something about how great it was to see Bucky and how good he was looking. He blushed a little, but smiled and said it was good to see them too. Steve was glad to see that everyone appeared to be back in good shape. He'd sometimes forgotten over the break that Bucky wasn't the only one who'd needed some time to recover.

Becky and Esther took off to go and sit with their friends, but Esther smiled shyly at Steve and lingered in the doorway a little before they left. Jim snickered.

"What?" Steve asked.

"She's got a major crush on you," Jim said with a smile.

"What?" Steve asked. "I, but, what?"

Jim's smile widened. "Oh, yeah. I mean, she always kind of liked you anyway, since you were always nice to her and all, checked up on her while I was gone and everything. And then you're this big hero, saving all these guys—her brother in particular," he added, gesturing at his chest. "And it doesn't hurt that you're all big and studly now," he added with a mischievous smirk. Steve could feel his face growing warm. "Oh, yeah. She's got it bad," Jim finished as the other guys laughed.

"I, uh…" Steve stammered. He really didn't know what to do with that. He didn't think anybody had ever had a crush on him in his life, never mind his friend's sister.

"I don't think she's the only one," Gabe said, chuckling.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked.

Gabe nodded toward the door of the compartment. "The train's been running for, like, half an hour. There can't be _that_ many people who need to go to the bathroom already." He nodded out at the corridor again in the direction of the bathroom a couple of compartments down. "But there's an awful lot of girls walking by, and I'm pretty sure they're slowing down every time they pass our door."

The other guys laughed harder, and Steve felt like his face was on fire. He was pretty sure his ears were blushing.

"Carmella only had eyes for you at Christmas too, you know," Bucky said, nudging Steve's shoulder and clearly enjoying this.

Steve groaned and buried his face in his hands while laughter echoed around him.

"Alright, alright," Bucky said before it went on too long. "Dugan, you got any cards?"

Dugan always had cards, and Jim pulled a new set of poker chips that he'd gotten for Christmas out of his bag, and they moved on to other, far less embarrassing topics.

After lunch, everyone started drifting off like they usually did. Steve was having trouble getting comfortable in the seat—yeah, it was nice being able to have his feet touch the floor, but he hadn't realized he would miss being able to curl up in the seat. Turning in his seat and trying to find a good angle, he noticed that Bucky was moving too, although not in an effort to get comfortable, but to stay awake. He wondered at first if he was just trying to stay awake so he'd sleep better tonight—even though the train ride was always exhausting—but he realized he was trying to avoid drifting off and having a nightmare in front of everyone else. Yeah, maybe he'd just wake up from it with a jolt or a gasp, but maybe he'd wake up screaming and sobbing. It was okay for Steve to see, but it would kill Bucky to have an audience for something like that.

"Hey," Steve asked casually, shooting for conversational instead of concerned as he tried to think of something that would distract Bucky. "You really think Carmella was watching me at Christmas?"

Bucky smiled. "Yeah. You really didn't notice?"

Steve shook his head. "I guess I'm not used to watching for that kind of thing. I mean, not that I want to start anything up with Carmella or anything."

"Sure," Bucky nodded.

"But it…What do I do with that?" he wondered. He didn't just mean Carmella, but girls in general.

Bucky grinned. "You might just have to get used to it. Like Jim said, you're all big and studly now."

"Stop calling me that," Steve said, raising a warning finger.

Bucky chuckled. "Look, just because people are noticing you, it doesn't mean you have to do anything about it. Yeah, there may be girls who have crushes on you." Steve could feel his ears going red again. "But you don't have to go out with them or anything," Bucky continued. "Hell, you don't even have to talk to 'em if you don't want to."

Steve nodded uncertainly. "I just, I've never liked being the center of attention."

"I know."

"And it, well, is it stupid to say that it feels kind of insulting? I mean, I've been going to this school for four and a half years. Girls never noticed me before. But now that I'm big and…and…"

"Handsome," Bucky supplied, and Steve blushed, but he supposed it was better than 'studly'.

"Am I really?" Steve asked. It felt weird and kind of conceited to think about.

"Well, you're not my type," Bucky said, arching an eyebrow. "But the evidence certainly seems to point that way." He looked at Steve curiously. "Is that bad?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know. I guess not. I've just, I've never been that before. And, you know, if that's the only reason people are interested in me now…"

He wasn't quite sure how to phrase what he was trying to say, but Bucky was nodding. "Yeah. And no, I don't think it's dumb to think that's insulting. It kind of is."

"So what do I do?"

"I think you're going to have to put up with it for a while. But, I think if you ignore it, it'll go away before too long."

"You think?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "I mean, right now, it's new. People didn't exactly have a chance to get used it before school was over, you know? Give it a little time, it'll lose its shine."

"I guess," Steve agreed. He'd been hoping for a more timely solution, but Bucky was probably right. He looked over at Bucky curiously. "Is it alright with you?" he wondered.

"Is what?"

"Well, I mean, me getting all this attention and stuff. Which I still haven't actually noticed a lot of—"

"Like I've been telling you for years, Stevie, you're pretty clueless with girls. You keep that up and the attention will go away faster."

"Shut up," Steve complained. "But really, I don't…I don't _want_ all this attention. You're supposed to be the…the handsome one and everything."

Bucky grinned. "I'm still the handsome one, Steve." He tilted his head to one side, smile dimming. "You really think it bothers me that people are paying attention to you now?"

Steve shrugged uncomfortably. It made it sound like he thought Bucky was pretty full of himself when he put it like that. "No. I just…It, well, it's different." He couldn't help thinking back to the alley from a month ago and Bucky's worries about how things had changed.

Bucky nodded, and Steve could tell he knew where Steve's head had gone. "Yeah," Bucky said. "It is. And I'm okay with that now." He looked like he meant it. "And not just because you said you would break my nose if I wasn't," he added with a smile. "But because I actually am." He looked over at Steve and nudged his arm. "You're the same Steve in new packaging. And that little guy…You were always a lot bigger on the inside, man. This fits you. And it doesn't bother me."

Steve smiled, unexpectedly touched. "Thanks," he said softly.

"Besides," Bucky continued, his grin widening. "I'm currently a free agent. If you find all the female attention too much too handle, you can just direct them my way."

Steve barked a surprised laugh at that, and Bucky started laughing too. Steve asked what Bucky thought Vicki Marlowe would make of that comment, and they talked about girls for a little while before drifting off to other topics, like the lack of Quidditch this year, or what Phillips might have planned for Steve in the S.S.R.

They arrived at Hogsmeade just a few minutes ahead of a rainstorm. They shuffled off the train and into the cold evening air towards the carriages. Bucky hesitated a few feet away from the carriage. "You okay?" Steve asked him.

Bucky swallowed. "Yeah," he said a little roughly. He nodded and hitched a smile onto his face that didn't reach his eyes. "I can see the horses now," he said.

"Oh," Steve replied, feeling like an idiot for not thinking of that earlier. A quick glance around showed him several people looking warily at the fronts of the carriages before getting in. A lot more people could see the horses now. "Sorry, I…"

"It's okay," Bucky said, hurrying up into the carriage. He shook his head. "Should have thought of that earlier."

"Sorry," Steve said again, not really sure what else to say.

"It's okay," Bucky said again as the carriage juddered into motion and rain started pelting the roof. "I just wasn't expecting it. I can see why you called 'em demon horses."

"I can't decide if the eyes or the inside-out-looking skin makes them creepier," Steve said, playing along as Bucky shifted the topic somewhat.

"Inside-out skin, definitely," Bucky declared. He shuddered. "Ugh, I can't believe you let me touch one of those things!"

"Hey, I told you not to," Steve protested, thinking back a couple of years. Admittedly, he'd said that not so much because it looked gross as because he was worried it might try to eat him. "Jacques was the one who said you could touch it."

* * *

Considering the way he'd left at the end of last term, Bucky thought it was weird how normal things felt being back at school. It was almost like he'd never left. It _was_ kind of weird going from the battlefield to prisoner of war to doing homework again. It seemed really mundane after all that, but there was comfort in it too. It was nice to be out of his house and out in the world and be reminded that it wasn't all bad out there.

He still had his nightmares, but they were more intermittent now. He'd been worried about coming back and waking up in the middle of the room screaming, but it was like his subconscious was aware of that, and though he knew he was screaming in his dreams, he woke up silently. Gasping for breath, or shaking, or crying, but quiet. Sometimes he could go back to sleep on his own, but sometimes he couldn't, and he would shuffle over to Steve's bed in the dark, and they'd go sit in front of the dying fire in the common room. Bucky would talk and try to get the horrors out of his head, or Steve would talk and try to distract him, and sometimes he would just shake and try to stop crying, and Steve would hang on to him and keep him grounded.

Some of the noises he heard in their room in the dark told Bucky he wasn't the only one having nightmares, and maybe it shouldn't have, but it made him feel a little better. He wasn't the only one having a hard time. He wasn't weak.

Something Bucky found to be surprisingly helpful was the physical training area that had been set up on the Quidditch field over the break. Thinking he should get back into shape if he was going to go on these missions with Steve, he'd gone out there planning to run a few laps. He found the sides of the field still cleared for laps, but the middle was now filled with weights, exercise bars, areas for sparring and even a climbing wall in the middle. The field was big enough, a lot of people could be out there without getting in each other's way.

Having something physical to do helped him wear his body out, which helped him sleep at night. And once he discovered the area with the punching bags…All that fear and anxiety and uncertainty that had been lying dormant but hadn't really gone away, now it had somewhere to go. He had to admit, Steve had been onto something a couple years ago with his whole 'punch away the pain' routine.

Today, Bucky had rushed out to the training area as soon as school was over. Their last class of the day had been Potions. One of the S.S.R.'s potion guys had stepped in to teach—and Professor Kendall was a lot more nasal and a lot less interesting than Professor Erskine—and something, some combination of ingredients, some smell, _something _had triggered something that took Bucky's brain back to Zola's lab. He spent the rest of class not listening to a word Kendall was saying, focusing on _not_ thinking about whatever it was his brain was trying to think about. He'd fairly run out of there when it was over, though he must have said something to assure Steve, because he hadn't run after him.

He hadn't bothered to change out of his school clothes, just dropped his bag, barely took the time to wrap his hands, then started punching. It took very little imagination for him to see Zola's face on the bag, and he punched harder and harder as the little scientist's mocking voice rang in his ears. The harder he punched, the harder it was to hear him.

"Bucky?"

Bucky whirled around, fists raised, having momentarily forgotten where he was. Peggy was standing in front of him. She was much better at not looking worried than Steve was. (Though it was still there a little bit.)

"Hey," he said, breathing hard.

"Is this a bad time?" she asked. "I could find you later."

"No," he said, dashing his arm across his forehead to wipe away the sweat. "It's fine. What's up?"

"Professor Phillips wanted me to talk to you," she said. "About this team of Steve's?"

"Okay." Sometimes Steve was out here doing physical training stuff with Bucky, but most of the time he was in Phillips' office, learning offensive and defensive spells and going over some tactical training. Stuff he would need to lead a team. "What about it?"

"Well, for starters, he wants to find out if you're actually planning on joining."

"Why wouldn't I?" he wondered.

Peggy smiled. "Because it's dangerous. He wants to actually hear you say, 'Yes, I want to do this,' and not just go off Steve's say-so."

"Yes, I want to do this," Bucky said, and his tone may have been a little touchy, but Peggy didn't seem to mind.

"I thought so," she said. "He wants you to come after school tomorrow for some orientation stuff and to talk to Howard about gear."

"Gear?" Bucky asked, puzzled. He'd thought they'd be going out just with wands.

Peggy grinned. "Howard has been quite the busy bee over Christmas. He's been working on defensive charms and some new tech, both magical and not. I think you'll find it very interesting."

Bucky nodded. "Okay. Thanks." He'd gotten his breathing back under control, and though they were somewhat shielded from the wind, now that he wasn't working, he was starting to shiver under the thin layer of sweat. It was almost dark. He'd been out here for a while.

"Is everything alright?" Peggy asked, waiting as he got his stuff together.

"I'm fine," he told her.

"My dad does that a lot," she said, nodding back at the punching bag. "He says it helps. I hope it's working for you." She sounded genuine, and not at all like she was judging him or trying to pry.

Bucky nodded. "It does."

"I'm glad."

They walked back up to the castle together, talking about fighting styles and moves. Bucky supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that Peggy knew stuff like that. He'd seen her put guys bigger than her on the ground before.

Steve arched a querying eyebrow at him when he walked into the Great Hall, and Bucky nodded. He was okay now. Steve looked at him a moment longer then nodded back, and they talked about the Transfiguration essay they had coming up.

"Peggy was talking to me about this team you and Phillips are putting together," Bucky said as they walked back to the common room. "Who all is gonna be on it?"

Steve shrugged. "I haven't asked everyone yet, but I was thinking the rest of the guys. I know they've all had training already, and I was thinking that they all had something different we could use."

"Like what?" It was certainly true, but he was curious to hear Steve's thought process.

"Well, Jacques, first of all, can sneak into anything," Steve said. "That's always great to have. Monty's really good at blowing things up. Intentionally, I mean. Jacques blows up a lot of stuff too, but he doesn't always mean to. Jim's got that medical training, and he's got a knack for Charms. Gabe is good at languages—you know he taught himself German over the break?"

"Really?" Bucky asked, impressed.

"Yeah. And he's working on Russian. He said he learned a little from that guy, Ivan, who was at the factory with you guys, and he wants to try to get better. He's pretty good at non-magical tech, too—radios and stuff like that. And Dugan's really good at hexes and curses and stuff. And Peggy is our liaison with the S.S.R.—she figures out where we should go and what we should do when we get there."

Bucky nodded. It sounded good to him. "Sounds like you've got it all covered. What's there left for you and me to do?"

He was teasing, but Steve frowned. "No, I don't mean—"

"I'm kidding, Stevie," he said, bumping his arm. Apparently, that remark about not being sure what he was good for anymore still had some bite. For about the millionth time, Bucky regretted that he'd ever thought his trip to the bar would help anything.

"Oh." Steve smiled. "Right."

"So, Peggy said Howard Stark was making some special gear for us?" Bucky said, changing the subject.

"Oh, yeah," Steve replied. "I'm not sure what it all is yet. He wants me to come in at lunch for something before we all meet tomorrow afternoon. But he's all about integrating magic and technology."

"That sound really cool," Bucky said. True, his experience so far with blended magic and tech had been terrible, but how awesome would it be to turn some of that back on Hydra?

* * *

_So, things are getting into more of a normal groove for our heroes. A couple more things to get settled, and then they'll start going on missions. See you Friday! I'd love to hear what you're thinking in the meantime._


	38. Something Goes Very Wrong

_Time to meet with Howard, get some gear and maybe even a shield. It's about time, no? But Steve's morning isn't going to go quite the way he was expecting...  
_

* * *

Steve hurried along the stairs down towards Howard's dungeon lab. He'd taken it over after Erskine…Well, it was his now. The S.S.R. still had an experimental branch, but they did their work somewhere else now. These first few weeks back at school had been busy, but exciting. Steve was learning more advanced magic—he could finally apparate—and apparently he was pretty good at all this tactical stuff. Phillips had given him a lot to study and had been testing him on it, and he'd been more complimentary on the results than Steve had ever seen. (Of course, it was Phillips, so that tended to look like a face that was mildly impressed in spite of itself, and a gruff, "Good job." Still, that was practically effusive.) It felt pretty amazing to actually be good at something. Bucky wasn't particularly impressed with Steve's discovery. According to him, Steve had always been good at planning and strategies, and he thought it was weird that Steve hadn't known that.

Coming to a stop in the hallway outside the dungeon, Steve realized he didn't need to have rushed. The door was shut, which probably meant Howard was meeting with someone else. The only person in the corridor was one of the girls who'd signed on with the S.S.R. (No girls had been accepted into combat roles, but some, like Peggy, who'd still wanted to participate had gotten jobs with the S.S.R. Most of them were clerical. As far as Steve knew, Peggy was the only one in intelligence.) He'd seen her around before, and was pretty sure she was a Sixth-Year. He thought her name might be Lorraine.

"Um, hi," he said. "I'm supposed to be meeting Howard Stark?" Why was that a question? He knew he was meeting Howard. Talking to girls he didn't know was still kind of unsettling. Even more so with the way they'd all been looking at him lately.

"He's with Professor Phillips," she said, not really looking up from the newspaper she was reading.

"Oh." Should he come back later?

She looked up briefly, back down at her newspaper, then up again in that double-take look that Steve had been seeing a lot since he got back. She blinked and turned on a dazzling smile, and his stomach twisted into a knot. Not the kind of knot he sometimes felt around Peggy, but a scary one. "You're welcome to wait," she told him, setting the paper down on her desk.

"Oh, yeah, okay," he said, moving back to lean against the wall. She kept looking at him.

"You know," she said, picking up her newspaper—Steve hoped for a moment that she was going to go back to reading it and stop looking at him. "I read about what you did," she continued. She was holding the paper up to display the headline. He recognized it as a Daily Prophet issue that had come out over the Christmas Break. There was a small interview with him that he vaguely remembered giving in Phillips' office at some point during that chaotic week back at campus, though the majority of the article was made up of statements from S.S.R. higher-ups.

"Oh. Um, yeah," he replied, not sure what else to do with that. He was tired of telling the story, and he was tired of people making such a big deal out of it. All he'd done was what needed to be done, and he didn't understand why it seemed so extraordinary to people.

"It's very impressive," she said, setting the paper down and leaning forward, one hand under her chin. She was still smiling.

"Thanks."

"Four hundred men," she continued, pushing herself to her feet. "That's a lot of people. And all on your own too. That's very brave. Even for someone as big and strong as you."

"Uh, well…" He scratched at the back of his head.

"The women of the wizarding world owe you their thanks," she said, and her voice was almost silky now. She stepped toward him and he instinctively backed away, but he was already leaning on the wall. His heart was starting to race and he felt a compelling desire to run away. Would that be rude? He swallowed hard at the way she was looking at him. Maybe he should do it anyway.

"And since they're not here to show their appreciation…" She braced one slender hand on his chest and grabbed his tie with the other, tugging his head down to her level. Her mouth caught his, and her tongue was moving against his as she kissed him, and for the life of him, Steve couldn't remember how to move or how to breathe or how to think or…or…anything. He was vaguely aware that somewhere his hands were moving, unsure of where to settle and waiting for instructions. His brain didn't seem to be able to get any further than the thought that this should stop. When he asked it how to do that, it had no idea.

He could hardly ask her to stop since her tongue was in his mouth, but maybe if he…he could just push her away. Right? He wanted this to stop and he wanted it to stop right now, but he didn't want to hurt her and accidentally shove her into the opposite wall either. Maybe he could just start pushing slowly and she'd take the hint and back up? But where should he…No, he probably shouldn't put his hands _there_, and that…well, that was also really close to…Maybe her waist? Okay, yeah, he could put his hands on her waist—not too low—and sort of push enough to make her take a step and—

Lorraine stepped away from him abruptly at the sound of a very unhappy throat being cleared behind them. She was blushing, but smiling to herself as she took a couple of steps back and straightened her jacket. Steve thought he was either going to throw up or pass out or maybe both, because the person who'd broken them up was Peggy and he wished the floor would just open up and swallow him alive so he wouldn't have to see the look on her face.

"Howard's ready for you," Peggy said icily, nodding at the door to the lab she'd just come through. "If you've got time." She spun on her heel and returned to the lab without saying anything else.

"Peggy?" he said timidly, hurrying after her. "I'm sorry, I—"

"For what?" she snapped. "You did always wish you could do things everyone else did, and now you are. Why should that bother me? Howard's over there," she added, pointing to Howard. She arched a judgmental eyebrow. "Might want to take care of that lipstick first."

He wiped a hand across his mouth, going even redder than he knew he already was when it came away stained with pink. "Peggy, I—" She was already gone when he looked up.

"Steve!" Howard called, and Steve sighed and swallowed and straightened his tie, then walked over to Howard because he wasn't sure what else to do. His brain was still kind of reeling from the unexpected kiss, and it was just easier to focus on what Howard was saying. He'd let his brain settle, then he'd think about it. Maybe Bucky would know what to do.

If Howard noticed that something was amiss, he was too polite to say anything, which Steve appreciated. He liked Howard well enough, but that was hardly a conversation he wanted to have with him. They talked instead about this special fabric that Howard had been designing—he'd been able to work a low-level shield charm into the material, which should be able to deflect minor spells and offer some protection against physical attacks like swords or knives.

"You really think we're going to run into people with swords?" Steve wondered.

Howard shrugged. "They're pretty archaic, but Hydra does sort of have a thing for that old mythological stuff. And there's always magic swords out there. Basically, it's a degree of protection from sharp objects. Bullets too, though not from too close."

He had Steve try on a prototype—a suit that came in a couple of pieces with some harnesses to hold it together. Steve's first thought was it was really uncomfortable, but that seemed like an ungrateful thing to say after Howard had put all this work in.

"What?" Howard asked.

"It's…Well," Steve said, moving and twisting with it a little. "It's really uncomfortable."

"Okay, good."

"Good?"

"Yes, good. I need feedback. You're not going anywhere in this thing. Early stages, my friend. Tell me how to make it better."

"Oh. Okay, well, it's really itchy. Like, to the point of being distracting." He didn't want to be focused on that when he was in the middle of a fight.

"Okay." He made a note on a piece of parchment. "What else?"

"It's really constricting up here," he said, gesturing awkwardly at his chest and shoulders. "I can barely move my arms."

"Uh huh," Howard replied, making another note. "Same thing in the legs?"

Steve moved his legs experimentally. "No, I think they're alright. It's really warm, though. Like, we're in a dungeon in January, but I'm already sweating in this thing."

"Okay, good," Howard said, making another note.

"I like the harnesses, though," Steve said, considering. There were several buckles and clasps that would be good for holding things. "And this stretchy part in the middle moves really well." He bent and twisted, and though he couldn't get his arms to go very far, he seemed to have full range of motion for his torso.

"Great!" Howard said. "Thanks. This'll help. I promise, it'll be better next time."

"And, maybe not so important, but does it have to be black?" Steve wondered. "It just feels very Hydra with the all-black."

"Mm, good point. Okay. I'll work on it. Get your other stuff back on, and come check this out."

Steve changed again and followed Howard over to a table covered with pieces of metal. "I've heard," Howard started conversationally. "That you've got a knack for a shield charm. I came up with a couple of ideas here in case you liked the idea of using the shield a little more offensively. Can't throw a shield charm," he said with a smile.

Steve considered the range of shields laid out on the table. He had a point. Shields were great for protection, but they did keep your wand from doing anything else while they were up. A physical shield could free up his wand, or be used as a weapon if he needed the magic shield.

Howard explained the features of a few of them. He'd really gone all out—one even incorporated electricity somehow. But Steve's eye was drawn to a simple silver circle at the end of the table. "What about this one?" he asked, picking it up. It was large enough to cover most of his upper body, and it was surprisingly light.

"Oh, that one's great!" Howard enthused. "Here, let me show you something."

Howard backed up and picked up a massive wrench and hurled it in Steve's direction. Instinctively, Steve pulled up the shield, and the wrench hit it with a resounding clang, but if it hadn't made a noise, he wouldn't have known it had connected. He hadn't felt a jolt or a shock or anything.

"Vibration-free," Howard said with a grin. "Or near enough, anyway. You get a big enough explosion, you might feel a little something."

"What is it?" Steve asked, running a finger around the edge of the metal in awe.

"Vibranium," Howard replied. "Absorbs kinetic energy and one of the few metals in the world that conducts magic. It's one of the strongest metals on Earth."

"Why haven't I ever seen anything like it before?" he wondered. It sounded incredibly useful. Why weren't more people using it?

"Because it's also one of the rarest metals on Earth," Howard said. "That's almost all we've got right there," he said, pointing at the shield. Steve set it down reluctantly. "No, hey, if you like it, keep it," Howard told him.

"Really?" They would trust him with something so valuable?

"Sure," Howard replied. "No point having it if no one's gonna use it."

Steve picked up the shield again and smiled. "Thanks."

He had to rush out again to make it to class, so he left the shield in the lab as Howard returned to his tinkering and muttering. There wasn't time to fill Bucky in on the kissing incident before the bell rang, though Bucky could tell something was bothering him. "Later," Steve whispered. He had trouble concentrating on Professor Binns' lecture about the Statute of Secrecy—not that Binns was ever easy to pay attention to anyway, but he kept looking up the row at Peggy, who was not making eye contact. She no longer looked upset, just very cool and collected, which was scarier than her acting mad.

After History of Magic was Herbology, and Steve and Bucky hung toward the back of the group as they all headed back up to the castle at the end. Steve explained in detail everything that had happened during lunch, and by the end of it, Bucky's eyes were the size of dinner plates. "Wow."

"Bucky, what do I do?" Steve asked.

"Well, I'd apologize to Peggy for starters," Bucky said.

"Yeah. How, though? 'Cause, I mean, _I'm_ not the one who was…but it didn't look good…but I don't know if she even, like, I kinda feel like maybe she likes me, but I don't know, and maybe not, and—"

Bucky cut him off before he could ramble too far. "Yeah, you didn't do anything wrong, but she doesn't know that. And maybe she doesn't like you and it's not a big deal, but if she does, nothing's ever gonna happen unless you clear this up. And even if she doesn't like you, you don't want her thinking you're the kind of guy who goes around feeling girls up in the hallway."

"No, I don't," Steve said emphatically.

"Nobody wants to be that guy," Bucky agreed. "So, just start with an apology. Say you're sorry. Don't say something like, 'I'm sorry if that upset you," because it sounds like you don't think she had a good reason to get upset and you're just apologizing because you have to. Just say you're sorry. Let her take that in, and if she's gonna be mad, let her be mad. _Then_ you can tell her what actually happened."

"Okay," Steve said, nodding.

"Be honest, but brief. You don't want to sound like you're making excuses. Oh, and tell her that stuff you told me about not being sure what to do with your hands. One, it'll explain why you were holding Lorraine the way you were when Peggy showed up. And two, it's kind of cute in a ridiculous sort of way, and that's very you."

"Hey!"

"I'm just trying to help you out here," Bucky said. "She knows you, so she'll know that that's genuine, and, yeah, she'll probably think it's cute. Which won't hurt you any."

Steve sighed. "This was never…I mean, you know I like her, right?"

"Really?" Bucky replied, eyebrows raised in mock disbelief.

"Shut up," Steve said, punching him in the arm. "I just…I don't know if anything's gonna happen. I've always been too scared to ask. And this doesn't help. But I don't know if, I mean, I don't know how she feels. About me, I mean. We've always been friends. I don't know if she's mad because maybe she _does_ like me, and she's mad about this kiss, or if she doesn't like me and she just thinks I've changed into a different kind of guy and she's mad about _that_, or, or…I don't know." He sighed again. "What if…what if I broke something and we can't be friends anymore?" The loss of a friendship frightened him more than the loss of the possibility of a future romantic relationship.

"Hey," Bucky said, clapping a hand to his shoulder. "Give Peggy some credit. Whatever the reason is that's she's mad, she's not gonna throw away a friendship over one fight. Apologize, be straight with her, and she'll tell you how to fix it."

Steve sighed. "Yeah."

They'd arrived at the door to Howard's dungeon. Thankfully, Lorraine was not there. "Stark did his thing with you at lunch, right?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah."

"So, go find her."

Steve's eyebrows shot up in alarm. "What, now?!"

"Yeah, now. It's not the kind of thing you want to let fester for too long, and besides, if you don't do it now, you're gonna freak yourself out worrying about it."

"I…"

"Go," Bucky ordered. "I expect some sort of report at supper." He nodded and clapped Steve on the shoulder again. "You've got this."

Steve sighed. He'd rather be breaking into another Hydra factory by himself right now. But if he could do that, then he could do this. He could fix it. Right?

* * *

_So, poor Steve has landed himself in a bit of a pickle. Tune in Monday to see how it works out! _


	39. Something Goes Very Right

_Poor Steve was in some trouble when we last saw him. Will Bucky's advice work to help him dig himself out?  
_

* * *

Peggy had spent her afternoon carefully not looking at Steve in class and not absorbing one word of her lessons. Now she was in her corner of Phillips' office, sitting on top of her desk and staring at her map of photos and strings and not seeing a bit of it. Why did this bother her so much? She twisted a bit of purple string around her fingers absently. It wasn't as though Steve was hers to feel possessive over. She didn't think of him like that. Didn't like him in _that_ way.

Did she?

Steve certainly liked her. Or he had done, anyway. That much had been obvious from nearly the day they'd met, though he'd never demanded any sort of reciprocation of those feelings from her. But maybe he'd finally moved on, and if that was the case, it was certainly petty of her to expect him to fawn over her forever. Although, when she had caught him with Lorraine…That wasn't just embarrassment at being caught out that she'd seen on his face. He'd been radiating remorse and guilt and fear and just about every emotion that suggested that Peggy seeing what she saw was the last thing he'd ever wanted to happen. If he'd moved on, he wouldn't have looked like that.

But then, why did he do it? And, the question still remained, why did she care so much? If you cared too much about things, people accused you of being just another over-emotional woman, and that was never going to get you anywhere in life. It was less work than it used to be for her to be 'the tough one'—the girl who could keep up with the boys—and so the depth of her emotion surprised her. Because she wasn't just angry. She was livid. And she was hurt. She hadn't been hurt—truly, deeply, personally _hurt_—in a very long time. Her skin was supposed to be thicker than that. That was one of those weak, feminine things that tough girls weren't supposed to feel, so why in the hell was she feeling it now?

_Did_ she like Steve? Was that what this was? Jealousy? She leaned back on the desk, chewing her fingernail thoughtfully. As a friend, she'd always liked Steve. He was easy to talk to, he was kind and brave and thoughtful, and he never treated her like he thought she might be less capable or less intelligent or less _anything_ just because she was a girl. A friendship originally born out of both of them being the odd one out had evolved into a real connection built on respect and admiration. Maybe that's what this was. The serum had changed Steve physically, and maybe it had changed him in other ways too. Maybe he _had_ actually changed into someone like so many of the other men she'd known, the kind that bounced between women and treated them like objects. She couldn't respect him anymore, not if he'd turned into someone like that. Maybe _that_ was why she was so angry.

But, no, it…Well, if that was the case, she thought she would be more sad than furious. Because the anger she was feeling, it felt very personal. It was stabbing at something deep down inside, and she wished she knew what it was.

Unbidden, the thought sprang to her mind that it should have been her. If it had been her pressing Steve up against that wall, her waist those big, strong hands of his were wrapped around…She sat up straighter with a little gasp. Where had _that_ come from? Bloody hell, she _was_ jealous.

Alright. That was unexpected. There was very little point pretending otherwise, though. Because that's why she was angry. Steve had kissed someone, and it wasn't her. The question of why this bothered her still remained to be answered, however. Or, rather, why this bothered her _now_. Because the fact that this bothered her now made her very uncomfortable. Steve had been getting a lot of attention since returning after his transformation. A lot of _female_ attention. He'd gone largely unnoticed by the women of Hogwarts up to this point, but now that he was tall and fit and—there was no denying it—gorgeous, he was turning a lot of heads. Peggy found the whole thing shallow and rather pathetic, and it turned her stomach to think that that might apply to her now too. Because if something like this only bothered her now, did that mean she only cared about what he looked like? She shuddered. She was just as bad as the rest of them.

She'd been pushing away the mental image of Steve kissing Lorraine, but she let it come now, determined to think through it and figure this out. To her surprise, when it appeared, it was Little Steve kissing Lorraine, reaching up to wrap his arms around her neck instead of her waist, and Peggy felt her blood boiling just the same. She thought about Little Steve, in that awkward, skinny little body that may have been cute, but no one was ever going to call handsome. She thought about the way his magic often failed him and the way he was so often over-looked and how he still never stopped trying. She thought about the way he'd looked after Rebecca and Jim's little sister while all the other boys were off at war; how he'd known all the names of the house-elves in the kitchen and noticed little things like the changes in their uniforms; the way he'd asked her about her dad and listened to her when she was worried about him while he was off with the Navy; and the way he'd been so shaken at the state he'd found Bucky in—the way he cared. She thought about the way he'd joined up with Professor Erskine when he'd been denied enlistment and how determined he'd been to do _something_ to help. She thought about the myriad fights he'd gotten into over the years and the pain they'd caused him—jumping to Gabe's defense after Ethan's cruel remarks, or sticking up for little Firsties that couldn't defend themselves, or storming a Hydra factory alone and saving four hundred people because it was the right thing to do and no one else was doing it. When the realization hit her, it wasn't so much a surprise as it was the feeling of something finally clicking into place—she'd _always_ liked Steve.

She'd always valued their friendship, and enjoyed things as they were. She'd never felt as though there was any need to rush into anything, but she realized she had always thought that at some point they would be, well, _something_. She'd felt like there was an understanding of sorts there. And that…_that_ was why she was angry. Because Steve had broken it. Steve had stolen her heart long before he'd gotten big and tall and handsome, and she had thought—she really _had_ thought—that Little Steve and Big Steve were the same person. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe she'd lost him. And _that_ was what hurt.

She jumped a little as the door creaked open on the other side of the office, and she thought maybe it was Professor Phillips coming back. She straightened up and wiped discreetly at her eyes, wicking away the moisture that had been pooling there.

"Peggy?" A timid, familiar and mostly certainly _not_ Professor Phillips voice asked her. Speak of the devil.

She turned slowly, schooling her face into something flat and unconcerned. "What is it, Steve?"

"I, uh, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute?"

She really didn't want to talk to him. She supposed she should. At some point. But not now. "Will it take long? I've got a lot to do."

"Oh. I, uh..." For a moment he looked like he was going to leave, but then appeared to think better of it. "I just, I'm really sorry about before. With Lorraine." Oh, well, that fixed everything, didn't it? "I, uh, I was hoping you would let me explain."

"You don't have to explain," she replied, and that clearly caught him off guard.

"I don't?" he asked, puzzled.

She shrugged. "What you do in your own time is your business. You're at perfect liberty to go around kissing whoever you like. I don't care."

"Oh," he said in a very small voice. She could tell that that had really hurt, like she'd intended it to, and for about three seconds, it felt really good. After that, it felt rather awful. "Okay," he said in that same small voice. "I'd still…" He cleared his throat, his voice coming back a little stronger. "I'd still like to explain, though."

"Why?" she wondered. She'd expected that that would have sent him packing.

"Because…" He looked up at the ceiling, as if the words he wanted might be up there. "I thought that maybe you…" He shook his head and brought his eyes back down to her. "Even if you don't, I…What you think of me is still really important to me."

That surprised her a little, but she wasn't really sure what to say to it, so she waved her hand in a 'get on with it' gesture. She _did_ want to hear his explanation. Was it naïve to hope it might be legitimate?

"Okay, um, well, I was supposed to meet with Howard at lunch," he started. "I went down there and he was busy with Professor Phillips, but L—Lorraine was there, and she said I could wait. So, I was standing there, and she had this newspaper, and it had a story about the factory and everything, and she started saying how it was this impressive thing that I did." He was blushing, like he usually did when people talked about the rescue mission.

"And I said thanks, but she just kind of, well, she kept going, and I wasn't really sure what else to say. Then she walked over to me and said something about how the women of the wizarding world owed me their thanks, but she'd have to do it for them since they weren't here, and then she just…" He was miming rather helplessly with his hands, and if she hadn't still been mad at him, it would have been kind of cute. "She just, grabbed my tie and yanked me down and started kissing me," he said.

Peggy blinked in surprise. That was abrupt.

"And I…I just wasn't expecting that, and I didn't know what I should do," he said. "I wanted her to stop, but I couldn't really say that 'cause her mouth was all…on mine. I thought I should just push her away, but I'm still…I'm still kind of trying to get used to being all big and stuff, and I didn't know how hard to—I was afraid if I just shoved her, I'd fling her into the wall or something, and I didn't want to hurt her, so I was trying to figure out where to…put my hands so I could push her back…" He was doing the helpless gesturing again, and Peggy realized he was miming his attempts to find an appropriate place to touch Lorraine. Well, that explained why his hands were where they were.

"And then it, well, you came in, and she moved away, and that's…what happened," he finished a little lamely. "I didn't want for that to happen, but whatever else…However else you feel about me, I didn't want to you think that I had changed into the kind of guy who does things like that." He met her eyes and blinked sadly. "I haven't changed, Peggy," he said, and his voice cracked just a little bit. "I know I look different, but I'm the same guy that I was before. I'd hate for…" He sighed and shook his head. "I'm still your friend, or I am if you'll let me be, anyway, and I hope this didn't mess things up between us. I'm sorry that it all happened, and I…" He sighed and shrugged, having run out of words. "Anyway, that's what happened, and I wanted you to know, and I'll just, I'll leave you alone now." He nodded and flashed her a very sad attempt at his usual smile and turned to head for the door.

"Steve, wait," she said, sliding off the desk. He turned around, looking cautiously hopeful, and her heart fluttered a little inside her chest. "Thank you," she said. "For explaining," she clarified. "I was, well, I suppose I _was_ afraid that you'd changed." It was a relief to know he hadn't. That the Steve she cared so much about was still there, just…taller now. There wasn't a bit of the story he'd just told her that she doubted, and she was surprised at how much better it made her feel. (Well, except for the part of her that was furious with Lorraine.) She smiled. "I'm glad you haven't."

A relieved smile broke across his face, and her smile got wider. She'd always liked the way he smiled at her. "Sorry I got so cross," she said, feeling suddenly embarrassed. Not that her anger hadn't been justified, but, knowing Steve as she did, she really should have given him the benefit of the doubt.

"That's alright," he said quickly. "It, well, it sure didn't look very good, did it?"

"It did not," she agreed.

He smiled and nodded. "Thanks," he said. He nodded over at her map. "I'll let you get back to work." He took a couple of steps towards the door, then stopped, turning back to look at her. "You know, it's funny, I…I've never kissed anyone before. I always kind of thought the first time I did it would, well, it would be someone I knew," he said with a slightly uncomfortable laugh. "But I always thought it would be someone I…" He looked up at her and then down at the floor quickly. "Someone I cared about, you know?" He sighed, huffing a self-deprecating laugh. "Oh well. I guess it doesn't really matter."

"I don't know," she said, thinking carefully over her next words. She didn't want to sound like she didn't care that Steve's first kiss hadn't gone as he'd hoped, but she wanted to reassure him all the same. And, having arrived at the realization of how she really felt, she didn't want to leave things hanging, but she hadn't been sure how to bring it up. Steve had just given her the perfect opening. "From what you were telling me, it sounds like she was the one doing all the kissing and you weren't really kissing her back."

"I wasn't," Steve said emphatically, and she'd thought as much, but it was good to hear.

"That's what I thought," she said, taking a couple of steps toward him. It seemed a little ridiculous to be having this conversation halfway across the room. Unconsciously, it seemed, Steve mirrored her action. "And, well, it seems to me that, as far as kissing goes, and especially first kisses, you would both have to…participate to actually call it a proper kiss."

"You think so?"

She nodded. "There's not really any denying that she kissed you, but if you didn't kiss her, as far as calling that your first kiss, I don't really think it counts."

They were standing very close together now, and Peggy wondered if Steve could hear her heart pounding because she certainly could. She was close enough to feel his breath warm on her face and she looked up at him, meeting those beautiful bright blue eyes that felt like they were staring into her soul. His mouth hung partly open, like he was waiting for something, and she licked her lips and drew in a quick breath.

Slowly enough to give him time to back away if he wanted to, but quickly enough to stop her losing her nerve, she slid her hands up his shoulders and twisted her fingers into the lapels of his shirt. She didn't pull him down as Lorraine had done, but pulled herself up instead, going up on her toes and planting her mouth gently on his. For a moment he just stood there, frozen like a statue and possibly not breathing, and just as she was starting to worry that maybe she'd made the wrong move, it was as though he suddenly came awake and he started kissing her back.

His arms moved to embrace her, one large hand splayed across her back—placed at the perfect gentlemanly height—and pulling her closer against him, and it was safe and warm and so very right. The other hand cradled the back of her head, soft and gentle in her hair, but strong and firm at the same time. He wasn't letting her get away, and she didn't want to, sliding her hands up from his collar and around his neck, pulling him closer to her. She wasn't letting him get away either.

When the need to breathe forced them apart, she pulled back reluctantly, biting her lip as if she could hang on to the taste of his. Her hands slid down from his neck, coming to rest on his chest, unwilling to let go of him entirely. "I think that one counts," she said breathily.

He was gaping at her, trying to catch his breath, and he huffed a husky, disbelieving laugh. "Yeah," he breathed, smiling at her in amazement. His smile kept getting wider, and she was pretty sure hers was too. "Yeah," he said again, seemingly all he could say. He moved his hands up to cup the sides of her face and leaned down and kissed her again.

* * *

Steve wasn't at supper, and neither, Bucky noticed, was Peggy. He figured that meant the conversation was either going really well or really badly. He hoped it was the first one.

He ate at the Ravenclaw table with Becky, Esther, Jim and Gabe, then returned to the dorm to get started on his homework. You'd think the O.W.L.s were tomorrow with the way teachers were piling work on them. The common room was too loud for him to concentrate—the First-Years were working on levitating spells, and they were yelling _Wingardium Leviosa_ and shooting magic all over the place. Their spells only occasionally hit their targets, and after one of them caught Donovan's Potions textbook and sent it flying into the fireplace, there was a lot of yelling. It was a lot quieter in his room.

He hadn't made it too far into his Herbology essay when Steve came in. "Hey," Bucky said, looking up. Steve hadn't come in any further than the door, and he was leaning on it and looking a lot like Bucky imagined _he'd_ looked when Steve dragged him home from the bar. Either that or like he'd been hit by a truck. "You okay?" he asked. Steve nodded. Alright, well, that was informative. "Where've you been?"

"Talking to Peggy," he answered.

"How did it go?" Bucky prompted when no others words were forthcoming.

"Yeah," Steve said, which didn't really answer the question. He crossed the room and dropped down heavily onto his bed. "Yeah, it was good."

"Did she punch you?" Bucky wondered. Steve looked kind of dazed, like he did when he got a concussion.

Steve shook his head. "No, she, uh…" He smiled and bit his lip, then he blinked, and, okay _now_ he was actually back in the room, looking at Bucky. He was grinning like an idiot. "She kissed me."

Bucky snapped his Herbology textbook closed and tossed it off the bed. "Okay," he said, sitting up straighter and turning so he was facing Steve directly. He grinned. "Tell me."

"Well, I, I went and talked to her, like you said," Steve started. "She was really mad. But she let me explain what happened and we talked a little, and…" The idiotic grin was back. "Bucky, she likes me."

Bucky chuckled. "Well, I kind of figured that, since she kissed you."

"No, but, she like, really likes me! Like how I like her!" Steve was clearly still blown away by this information. "That's why she was so mad, 'cause she thought I was, well, you know, but…She likes me," he finished, shaking his head like he couldn't believe it.

"So, you cleared up the Lorraine thing," Bucky prompted when Steve looked like he was starting to float off again.

"Hmm? Oh! Yeah," Steve replied. "Yeah, then, um, well, then we were okay again and I was gonna go, but before I did I said something about how I always thought the first time I kissed somebody, it would be somebody I cared about. And she said how it maybe didn't count as a first kiss since I didn't kiss Lorraine back. And then we were just…sort of…standing real close to each other and…" The idiotic grin was softening into a dreamy, dazed one. "She put her hands up like this and slid them up to my neck," he said, touching his shoulder. "And then she was, she was kissing me," he breathed.

"I kind of just stood there for a second," Steve admitted, cheeks reddening a little as the dreamy expression slipped off his face. "I didn't, well, I didn't actually know _how_ to kiss anybody. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with my hands. Or my tongue." Bucky bit his lip but he did not laugh.

"But then I thought, well, I'd better do _something_, or she's gonna stop. So, I did, and I guess I did it right, because she was smiling when we were done." The big, dorky smile was back.

"Way to go, Stevie," Bucky said, smiling along with him. His excitement was contagious. He was so glad this had worked out so well for him. Steve deserved to have something go right in his life. And he'd always kind of figured Peggy had liked Steve back—she was just much smoother about it than he was. About time the two of them got things going.

"We talked for a while after that. I kissed her a few more times," he said almost shyly, blushing a little but looking very pleased with himself.

"Wow," Bucky said, shaking his head. "You know, when I told you to go talk to her, I figured you could fix it, but I didn't see it going as well as all that." He grinned. "Aren't you glad you listened to me?"

Steve laughed. "Yeah," he agreed. He still looked kind of dazed, and Bucky knew there wasn't going to be any more homework getting done tonight. "Bucky, I have a girlfriend," he said like he couldn't believe it.

"And about time, too," Bucky said with a grin. "Come on," he said, hopping up and reaching over to smack Steve on the leg.

"Where are we going?" Steve asked, following him to the door.

"Well, you missed dinner, and this calls for a celebration. I say we go find Winston and see if he can't whip something up."

* * *

_Well, that turned out well, didn't it? Steggy for the win!_


	40. Strength In Scars

_Steve's still up on Cloud Nine, but the team has a bit more work to do before they head out.  
_

* * *

Steve spent the next couple of days floating around the castle. He was so unbelievably happy, it was kind of ridiculous. It didn't even bother him when the other guys started teasing him. He did blush a little when Becky started giggling and singing about Steve and Peggy sitting in a tree, but then Bucky smacked her in the shoulder and told her to stop, and she kicked him in the shin and told him not hit her, and then it devolved into a sibling argument that Steve had to break up while Peggy laughed.

After school, Phillips was having him and the rest of the guys come in for training together—Steve had caught up to what Phillips deemed an acceptable level, and he wanted them to practice working together for a while before they went anywhere. Steve was itching to get out there and get into the fight, but he knew he had a point. They were friends, but they hadn't all worked on the same team before, and they all needed to be familiar with how each other operated.

They also needed to be familiar with the new gear Howard was providing them with. Howard had fitted the shield Steve had picked with a couple of adjustable straps so he could carry it on his arm, and he'd fitted a magnetic clasp into the back of the harnesses on his uniform so he could hold it on his back if he wanted his hands free. (The uniform had improved dramatically—it breathed, it moved, it was exceedingly comfortable, and Howard had replaced the Hydra-black with a deep blue. He'd added a white star and a bit of white and red around the middle for color, and because he claimed he got annoyed being one of only two Americans in the S.S.R. on this side of the ocean and wanted to insert some American pride into things.) Steve had been practicing with the shield, getting a feel for its weight and how he could move it. He was getting pretty good at throwing it too.

None of the other guys had been left out. Aside from various colors and styles of his protective fabric for each of them, Howard had been working on a range of weapons and devices. Steve was starting to wonder if he ever slept. There was a range of explosive devices that utterly delighted Monty, Dugan and Jacques. There were radios that worked on a magical frequency that couldn't be detected by regular radios, and another set that worked on normal wavelengths and couldn't be interfered with by magic. Howard had been apologetic that he hadn't figured out how to combine the two into one yet, but Gabe and Jim had waved off the apology and spent the afternoon running all over the castle grounds testing the range. He'd also worked up what looked like a leather backpack for Jim that somehow had enough room inside to hold enough medical supplies to outfit a small hospital. The little glowy piece of tech Steve had brought back had turned out to be some sort of magical energy power supply, and Howard had distilled it out into a couple of energy packs and worked up a few guns that shot that same energy. They were like the ones that had captured Bucky's unit, and Dugan had happily claimed them.

There were also some regular, non-magical guns, which Steve found surprising, but Phillips wanted them all trained with. As they'd learned from the fiasco in London, magical security charms didn't detect guns, and not all magical shields defended against them. Bucky, as it turned out, was a fantastic marksman, and Phillips had had him do some extra training with the guns, designating him the team sniper. Bucky had been a little ruffled with the assignment at first, since it meant on certain missions he would be kept back out of the action, but then Steve pointed out that it gave him the ability to watch everyone's backs and he'd taken on the new training with gusto.

They'd been practicing working with the gear and with each other for a couple of weeks now. They'd also been practicing a lot of defensive spells—Phillips never wasted an opportunity to remind them that these were dangerous dark wizards they were going up against. A very grizzled Auror named Jenkins had come in from the Ministry of Magic a couple of days ago, and had been demonstrating some of the darker spells that it was likely they were going to run up against. It hadn't been the most pleasant series of lessons. There had been some rather graphic demonstrations, and Steve had wondered if this was a regular part of Auror training, or if it was special just for them and the war.

Today, very much to Steve's surprise, Jenkins had announced that they were going to have a practical lesson and practice fighting off the Imperius Curse. Everyone had noticeably blanched at that, but he'd insisted it was necessary. There wasn't much point, he'd said, in practicing fighting off other curses, since they tended to have physical effects, but the Imperius Curse affected the mind instead of the body and could be resisted with the proper training. Better to practice here where it was safe than try to do it when lives were on the line. Steve supposed he had a point, but he didn't like it much.

He was giving them tips on how to fight it off, and Steve knew it was important, but he was having trouble listening. He was distracted by Bucky, who was sitting very still and breathing kind of unevenly, looking like he was trying not to throw up. "Buck?" he whispered. "Are you okay?"

Bucky shook his head.

"Okay." They were in the back of the classroom, and he stood up quietly, taking Bucky's arm and pulling him after him. "What's up?" he asked when they were out in the corridor.

Bucky swallowed hard, closing his eyes and shaking his head quickly. "I don't think I can do this. I can't. I can't, Steve, I can't."

Steve was nervous about it too, but Bucky looked like he was on the verge of having a panic attack. What was—no. Oh, no. A sick knot twisted in Steve's stomach. "Zola used this curse on you, didn't he?"

Bucky nodded.

Okay. Okay, that—no wonder he was freaking out. "Bucky, I need you to breathe," Steve said, putting his hands on Bucky's shoulders to steady him. "Breathe. Just inhale. There you go," he said encouragingly. "There you go. Okay, let it out. Good. In again. Okay, there you go, you're breathing. Keep breathing. Deep breaths." He kept holding Bucky's shoulders and Bucky kept breathing, and after a minute, he seemed calmer. "Okay. You wanna talk me through it?"

Bucky pulled in a deep breath. "I'm sorry." The frightened paleness of his face was slowly being replaced by red.

"It's okay," Steve assured him. "Don't worry about it. Talk to me."

Bucky nodded. "He did it a lot," he said quietly. "If I wasn't…If I wasn't doing what he wanted me to, or if I wasn't doing it fast enough. He'd do it and I'd have to tell him whatever he wanted to know, or he'd give me some new kind of potion and tell me to drink it and I would, even though I knew it was gonna hurt me." He swallowed hard. "It's like…It's like you're floating," he said. "Nothing hurts and nothing scares you, and everything is fine. All you wanna do is whatever you get told to do, and it feels _amazing_." He swallowed hard again. "But it's terrifying, because no matter how good it feels, you're still in there and you know it's wrong. You know it's not supposed to work like that, and you know someone else is controlling you, but you can't…" His voice cracked and he looked up at the ceiling.

"I couldn't make him stop," he said sadly. "I tried, Stevie, I _tried_!"

Steve slid his hands around from Bucky's shoulders to his back and hugged him. "I know you did," he said softly. He'd always thought he'd heard the worst of what Hydra had done to Bucky, but then there would be another nightmare, or another broken confession like this and Steve's heart would break all over again.

"I fought him—I fought him so hard, but I couldn't—" Bucky buried his face in Steve's shoulder and shook his head. "That's how I know I can't do it," he whispered. "I never could."

Steve just held on to him for a minute, trying to think of what to say. "Okay," he said at last. He pulled him back so he could look at him. "Okay. If you need to not do this, then that's okay."

"Jenkins said we have to—"

"Screw Jenkins," Steve spat. "If you say you can't do it, then no one's gonna make you."

Bucky smiled a little at Steve's vehemence. "What if something happens while we're out there?"

Steve nodded. "I'm not gonna lie, it's a good thing to know how to do. But if you need us to work around it, then we'll work around it. There's a hell of a lot of resourceful people on this team. We can figure something out."

Bucky did smile at that.

"I'm not gonna make you do this," Steve continued. "But can I just throw something out there?" He waited for Bucky to nod before going on. "When Zola put the curse on you before, you were sick. You were exhausted, starving and beat half to death and under the influence of, like, seven other spells and potions and crap. Never mind fighting off another curse, you couldn't even stand up. You don't have to try, but I think you've got the strength to take a pretty good shot at it this time."

Bucky chewed his bottom lip pensively. "I don't know…You really think so?"

Steve nodded. "I do. Hell, you may even be better at it than any of us since you know what to expect."

Bucky closed his eyes, seemingly needing a moment for internal debate. "Alright," he said, taking a deep breath and opening his eyes. "Let's do it."

"Are you sure?"

Bucky nodded. "They're not gonna beat me." He smiled humorlessly up at Steve. "I'm probably not going to sleep tonight, but I…" Another deep breath. "I'm gonna do it."

"Okay," Steve said, knowing he had only an inkling of how hard this was, but proud of him for doing it.

Back in the classroom, Jenkins made no comment on their absence, and Steve found himself reevaluating his previous opinion of him as a tough, emotionless drill sergeant. He wondered what Jenkins had seen that set those sympathetic lines around his eyes.

He put them through it one at a time. He never asked them to do anything outlandish—run a lap around the room, climb up on the desk, something like that. He told the rest of them to watch the eyes of the person under the curse—that was where you could see it take hold, and where you could see them fight it off. Steve certainly saw the first part. It was fascinating and deeply unsettling to watch that glazed look slip over each of his friends' faces. Thus far, no one had fought it off. Jenkins didn't seem worried. It took practice, he said.

When it was Steve's turn, he went up to the front of the room apprehensively. Jenkins was using a non-verbal spell, so he didn't know when it was coming until it was suddenly already there. He felt his muscles relax, all the tension from worrying about Bucky draining away. Bucky. He looked up, and Bucky was staring at him anxiously. He wanted to tell him not to worry, that this felt pretty fantastic, actually, but nobody had told him to say anything, so he may as well wait.

A glass of water appeared in his hand. A far-off voice told him to drink it, and there was absolutely nothing he'd rather do, so he lifted the glass to his lips. As he drank it, he saw Bucky again across the rim of the glass, and he still looked upset. Why was he…Wait, this was bad, wasn't it? He wasn't supposed to be doing this. He tried to put the glass down, but he wanted to keep drinking. Didn't he? He did but he didn't. There was something going on, something bigger than the water, and he needed to put it down. He needed to, but he couldn't.

Suddenly he was choking on the water as he tried to drink it and stop drinking it at the same time, and there was a sudden, sharp pain in his hand and the fog in his brain lifted. He remembered where he was and what was going on, and he was wet and he was coughing and his hand was bleeding. "What…" he sputtered.

"Not bad, Rogers," Jenkins said, inclining his head. "Especially for your first go-round. Did you see that, everyone? In his eyes, that's where you could see it. He couldn't fight it all the way off, but he knew something was wrong. Here, give us your hand," he said, motioning to Steve.

Still a little confused as to what had happened, Steve stepped towards Jenkins, holding out his bleeding hand. As one of his shoes crunched down on broken glass, Steve realized he must have tightened his grip on the glass so much that it shattered. Jenkins picked a couple of shards out of his hand then waved his wand over it and the gashes sealed. He handed Steve a handkerchief to wipe off the blood.

"Alright," he said. "Good job. Last one." He beckoned for Bucky to come up, and Bucky swallowed hard and looked like he was contemplating throwing up, but he stepped forward, nodding briefly to Steve as he passed him.

Jenkins studied him a moment, then nodded. He waved his wand, and a glassy, far-off look slipped over Bucky's face and reminded Steve uncomfortably of the way he'd looked when he found him in the factory. He shouldn't've tried to talk him into this. This was a bad idea.

"Sit down over there," Jenkins told him, nodding at a desk to the side where a quill, inkwell and sheet of parchment were waiting. "Start writing out what we've learned today." Bucky stumbled over to the desk, but stopped beside it instead of sitting down. One corner of his mouth started twitching, the fingers of his right hand shaking as he balled them into a fist. "Oh, very good," Jenkins said to the rest of them. "Look at that. D'you see what he's doing?"

Steve could see it this time, what Jenkins was talking about with the eyes. Bucky was fighting some sort of internal battle, gaze no longer glassy, but determined. His hand twitched toward where the quill was waiting on the desk, then all of them—including Jenkins—jumped as he yelled, "NO!" and grabbed the desk and flung it away, the shattering of the inkwell punctuating his shout.

"Oh, very well done," Jenkins said. "At ease, son," he added when Bucky whirled to face him, wand raised and breathing hard. "You did it."

"I did?" Bucky breathed, sounding surprised.

"You did," Jenkins repeated. "Threw it off completely."

"I did?" Bucky repeated.

"Aye," Jenkins nodded, clapping him briefly on the shoulder. He turned to the rest of them. "I think we'll call it quits for today. Same time tomorrow." The other boys rose to go, casting glances back at Bucky as they did so. Steve gathered his things slowly, waiting for Bucky.

"You did well today, Barnes," Steve heard Jenkins say quietly. "That was quite a reaction. Is everything alright?" he asked. Steve looked up from his bag to see that Jenkins had turned away from Bucky and was picking up the pieces of broken glass on the floor, not scrutinizing him as he spoke.

"It is, Sir," Bucky said, and he sounded just a little shaky, but sure of what he was saying.

Jenkins nodded, still focusing on the mess. "It's a wise man who lets his scars make him stronger," he said, as casually as if he were remarking on the weather. "See you tomorrow."

Bucky moved for the door and Steve followed him, grabbing both of their bags. "You okay?" he asked him once they were out in the hall.

"Yeah," Bucky said. He took his bag back from Steve. "Yeah." He smiled up at Steve, and it was small, but genuine. "I am."

* * *

_Okay, now everything is in place! Tune in Friday to see the boys head out for their first mission! In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story._


	41. The First Mission

_Okay, everybody's back on their feet again, and it's time to get back to the action. The team heads out for their first mission together.  
_

* * *

Phillips didn't send them on any missions until February—it had taken them far less time to complete their training for their earlier missions, but the stakes were higher now, and he wanted to make sure they could handle it. They'd gotten their first assignment from Peggy, then they sat around in Phillips' office and worked out how they were going to do it. Steve did most of the planning, though he was a very democratic leader, making sure everyone had a voice. Bucky didn't know why he expected there to be more pushback on Steve being in charge. He guessed he was just used to people not thinking Steve could do anything. But these guys were his friends, and they'd all seen him in action back in November—more so than Bucky had, actually, since they'd all been conscious—and knew he could do this. Phillips sat in the back, saying very little and watching them intently. Bucky felt like they were in class and wondered briefly if they were going to get graded on this.

Their first mission was reasonably low-key. S.S.R. spies had been working off of Steve's memories of the map from the factory, and had gotten exact coordinates for two more. One of them was sending a shipment of parts out, and while their eventual destination was probably the mysterious 'home factory' that was building whatever the final product was, this shipment was going to the other factory they already had a location on. Their job was to record what sort of parts were being shipped out in the hopes of figuring out what exactly it was Hydra was building, then blow all the parts and the rest of the convoy to hell.

The night before the mission, Bucky broke down and went to the kitchen for some of Willow's special tea to help him sleep. He'd been avoiding it since coming back, because he knew it would help and he didn't want to get stuck depending on it and have it become something he needed every night. This on and off nightmare thing was tough, but he was making it, and he could finally see that 'okay' at the end that Steve kept talking about. He knew he could get there.

But tonight, he was absolutely terrified, unable to stop himself thinking of what could go wrong and where he could end up again. And he needed to be able to sleep, because tomorrow there would be people depending on him to keep them alive, and if he was exhausted and not thinking straight, he couldn't keep them safe.

He got up in the morning feeling slightly nauseous from nerves, but well-rested. He changed into his new uniform that Howard had put together—the deep blue of his coat mirrored Steve's new uniform, though the browns and blacks of the rest of it were more muted. He made sure to kiss Becky goodbye and tell her that he loved her, and it was easier to be brave and assure her that he'd be back tomorrow when she was looking at him like that.

"I'll be fine, Munchkin," he promised.

"You'd better," she said, hugging him tightly and trying not to look worried.

They apparated somewhere into Switzerland, then hiked a mile to meet the road the Hydra trucks would be travelling down. (Unsure of what sort of defensive spells the trucks would have, they apparated somewhere outside of tracking range.) They spaced themselves out along the road, Jim nearest to where the trucks would be. That gave him the most time to gauge their protective spells. Jacques was at the end, ready to board the vehicles after the rest of the team broke the spells down.

"I've got them in range," Jim hissed through the radio in Bucky's chest pocket. "Three trucks, I'm counting a driver and two guards for each one—one inside, one on top. Revealing spell shows two more in each truck bed. Standard non-apparating spells…Caterwauling Charm on the one in the middle—that'll have the most valuable parts in it…A couple of different alarm spells…Interesting—there's a Limiting Charm on each truck—no more than five wizards in a vehicle."

"How do we get Jacques in one, then?" Dugan hissed from further down the line. A spell like that was significantly harder to lift than the rest of them, and they wouldn't have the time to do it.

"Just a minute…" Jim said, sounding distracted. "Lemme try something."

Bucky started pondering over their other options while they waited for Jim. The part of the plan about blowing the convoy could probably still go off without much of a problem, but if they couldn't get Jacques on a truck, they weren't getting any of the intel Phillips wanted.

"Hah!" Jim exclaimed quietly. "I thought so. We don't have to lift it. The Limiting Charm is for five wizards which, technically, Jacques is not, because he's underage."

"Is the spell going to recognize that technicality?" Steve pressed, asking the question that Bucky was wondering about too.

"Oh, yeah," Jim assured him. "Things like that are hard-wired into these kinds of spells, and creating an exception would leave a very noticeable trace, which I would pick up."

"Alright," Steve said. "Monty, you ready?"

"Say the word, Captain," Monty replied. Apparently, Dugan had taken to calling Steve 'Captain' during the rescue mission, and it had caught on like wildfire. They still called him 'Steve' in civilian life around school, but during training and now, apparently, on missions, Bucky was the only one who didn't call him 'Captain'.

"Go."

The trucks were rumbling into view, and Bucky gripped his wand tightly. As they approached Bucky's position, there was a loud explosion, accompanied by a metallic groan and a cloud of dust. The truck in the back stopped, and the two in front trundled to a halt. The guards on top started yelling, Gabe quietly translating the German through the radios. The first part was going according to plan—Monty's bomb and the inconspicuous shrapnel it left behind had left the rear truck with a flat tire and a perfectly innocent-looking bit of junk that had apparently caused it.

The drivers remained in the vehicles, and the guard on top of the middle truck stayed in place, but everyone else climbed out to start fixing the tire (or take a smoke break and act like they were helping). Concentrating on the middle vehicle, Steve, Jim and Dugan began lifting the protective spells. Bucky and Monty kept watch while Gabe continued to listen to the conversation, an ear out for any hints of suspicion. Jacques was waiting in the bushes near the road, ready to run.

"Spells are clear," Jim whispered after what felt like hours.

"Tire guys are still focused on the wheel," Bucky said. "They've got the busted one off. I'm guessing you've got about three minutes."

"Jim," Steve hissed, and a second later, a flock of birds conjured by Jim's wand burst loudly out of the trees on the other side of the road, drawing the attention of the drivers and guards. "Go!" Steve ordered, but Jacques was already running.

He rolled under the middle truck, vanishing out of sight. "Je suis dans le camion," he hissed seconds later, leaving them all to ponder how he'd gotten in from underneath. "Je te vois dans quelques heures," he added.

The Hydra guards tramped back to their respective vehicles, the tire repaired. Everyone held their breath as two of them climbed into the back of the middle truck. After a very tense minute, the trucks took off again.

"Dang," Gabe breathed. "How in the hell does he do that?"

"I don't know, but I'm glad he does," Steve said. "That tracker working?"

Gabe looked at the device clipped to his belt. "Yep." Jacques was wearing a tracking device that Howard had put together. It transmitted on a magical frequency, so it couldn't be interfered with like most electrical devices sometimes could, but it put out small amounts of electrical signals to disguise its magical nature. Jacques could hide wherever he was hiding and gather intel for hours, and when they stopped for the night, the rest of them could apparate right to him.

"Good," Steve replied. He looked around. "Good job guys. First part's done."

The hours of waiting that came next were the worst part. There was nothing to do except hope that Jacques didn't get caught. They couldn't even apparate ahead and get set up since they weren't sure where the trucks were going to stop. Dugan suggested they play cards, which Steve shot down because they were working. Steve wanted to go over the plan for the evening again, and after they did it the first time, Bucky pulled him aside and told him to take it easy and trust that his team knew their jobs. Steve blushed and insisted that he did—he was just nervous and he wanted everything to go right. Bucky got that—it was, technically, Steve's first mission.

"Listen, though," he told him in a low voice. "I know you trust these guys. And right now, they know it, but if you keep checking and double-checking, they're gonna start thinking maybe you don't. And if that happens, they'll have a hard time trusting you, and then everything falls apart."

"Right," Steve nodded. "Sorry."

"It's alright," Bucky assured him. "I know you've just gotta get the hang of this, but you're in charge, so you've got to set the tone for everyone else. You don't actually have to be confident, you just have to act like it."

"I can act confident," Steve said. He huffed a short laugh. "I've been acting like I know what I'm doing for fifteen years, so…"

Bucky smiled.

"It's just…" Steve continued. "It's hard, you know? 'Cause if I mess up, it's more than just me that gets hurt this time."

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. I know. And that kind of sucks, but all you can do is your best. That's all anybody's expecting of you." He reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "And the best Steve Rogers can do is a hell of a lot. You've got this, man."

Steve smiled hopefully. "You really think so?"

"I really do."

Steve smiled. "Thanks." Things were far less tense after that as they sat around and waited in the bushes.

It was almost sunset by the time they got the signal from Jacques. "Alright, guys," Steve said. "You ready?"

"Hell, yeah!" Dugan enthused. "Let's go blow stuff up!"

That got a laugh out of everyone, including Steve, who was trying not to act amused by it. They strapped on their gear, locked on to Jacques' signal, and apparated away.

Bucky had done it at least a hundred times by now, but he still always stumbled a little bit when he landed. Fortunately, it was getting dark, so no one could tell. Steve made sure they were all there, un-splinched, then they set off quietly in the direction of the camp.

"Hold!" Jim hissed. Everyone stopped immediately. "We're at the outer alarm spell." He pointed to a spot a foot in front of him. Now that Jim had pointed it out, Bucky could feel the faint hum of magic.

"Positions," Steve whispered, and they all fanned out into the woods, mindful of the edge of the spell. Bucky guessed it was about twenty feet in from where they stood to the center of the circle where the Hydra guards were gathered around the fire. Twenty feet wasn't that far, but it was going to seem a lot farther once people started shooting at them.

He found a tree that was tall enough and slung his rifle over his back. It was strange how much more difficult it was to climb a tree when you were trying not to make any noise. "Ready?" Steve asked through the radio.

"Nope," Bucky replied. He didn't want to still be positioning himself when everyone else was running in. He found a good branch and stretched out along it on his stomach. A forked bunch of twigs provided a resting place for his rifle, and he leaned in, checking the scope. No trees in the way, and he was high enough to see over the tops of the trucks, giving him a view of the whole camp. Perfect. "Okay, I'm good," he said.

"Count?" Steve asked.

"I've got all fifteen," he replied. "Ten sitting around the fire, two on the outside of the trucks on Gabe's side smoking, three keeping watch closest to you, Dugan and Jim. Monty, you're clear. No sign of Jacques."

"Je suis hors du camion," Jacques informed them from wherever the hell he was hiding. "Allumons-le!"

There was a beat of silence. "Go!"

A loud wailing sound split the sleepy twilight as the team broke over the line of the alarm spell. The Hydra guards were on their feet, dropping dishes and cigarettes and holding guns at the ready. Bucky noticed that several of them had those disintegrator guns as well as regular ones, and he focused his attention on them first. One went down, and then another, and then Steve and the other guys had hit the edge of the camp and Bucky sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Steve had talked Howard into changing the colors of their combat gear to something other than Hydra-black.

Bucky knew there was a plan, but from where he was sitting it looked like chaos. Spells were lighting up the air, bullets were flying, and everyone was yelling. Jim was casting spells faster than Bucky could see, Dugan was firing his guns and howling like a madman, and Steve was shooting spells with one hand and throwing that shield of his with the other—it ricocheted off one of the trucks and took down two guards before Steve caught it. Bucky took a second to be impressed before taking aim at another guard, but he went down before Bucky fired a shot—Jacques had rolled out from wherever he'd been hiding, and after a second he got up, but the guard did not. Bucky readjusted his aim and took out a guard who was coming up behind Gabe.

An explosion rocked the night—Monty had detonated the first bomb, and one of the trucks went up in a ball of fire. After getting over their shock, the Hydra guards seemed to retaliate with new ferocity. The fighting was so close now that Bucky couldn't get a good shot in, and though he ached to jump down and join in the fight, he kept his position. Dugan went down and then came up again, roaring like the giant dog that served as his Patronus. Gabe and Jacques were back to back, and Gabe was favoring his left side but they were holding their own. Steve was dueling with two guards at once, and Bucky couldn't get a clear shot at the third that was coming up behind him, but he was able to get him in the leg and Steve finished him off.

Bucky could see Monty move away from the second truck, and a surge of fear washed over him as he realized Jim had gotten pushed too close by the guard he was fighting and wasn't going to have time to get clear. He sat up away from his rifle and pointed his wand down at his friend. "_Wingardium Leviosa_!" he yelled desperately, and Jim flew through the air and into the woods as the guard he'd been fighting went up in flames along with the truck. For a frightening moment, he lay still, then Bucky let out a sigh of relief as Jim started struggling to climb out of the bush he'd landed in.

Steve and the rest of the guys had gained the upper hand back at the camp, and managed to subdue the rest of the guards before the third truck went up. Bucky slid down from the tree as a final fireball lit up the night, accompanied by victorious howling from Dugan and a wolf-whistle from Jacques. Steve grinned and nodded at him as he moved into the firelight. "Everybody good to move?" he asked, casting his eyes around the rest of the group. Just because they'd taken out the convoy, it didn't mean Hydra didn't have some way of keeping tabs on it from further away. Better to get out before anyone showed up to check on them.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Gabe said, and though he was leaning on Jacques, he looked ready to go.

They apparated out and back to the place where they'd waited that morning. Gabe sank to the ground with a groan, and Dugan moved off into the trees, circling them and muttering protective spells as he went. Monty pulled out a couple of lanterns. "How bad are people hurt?" Steve asked, looking around the group worriedly.

"I got shot, but I think I'll live," Gabe groaned. He pulled his hand away from his thigh, where a dark stain was slowly spreading out across the fabric of his pants. "Jim, you can do bullets, right?"

"Yeah, but keep pressure on that!" Jim snapped. Jacques pulled out a handkerchief and balled it up before pressing it against Gabe's leg, making him hiss in pain. "Bucky, give me a hand with this," Jim said, gesturing awkwardly at the medical bag on his back.

"You okay?" Bucky asked. Jim winced as Bucky helped him remove the backpack.

"Yeah, just can't move my arm enough to get this off," he said. "That was you that threw me into the bushes, right?"

"Yeah," Bucky replied. He winced. "Is it broken?"

"Yeah," Jim answered.

"Sorry."

"Hey, a broken arm's an easy fix. And, you know, I'm not in a bajillion pieces, so…" He smiled. "Thanks. Good looking out."

Bucky nodded, and Jim lifted his wand and muttered a spell at his arm. Bucky heard the bone snap back together. "You good?"

"Good as new," Jim declared, lifting his arm and waggling his fingers. He turned to Gabe. "Alright, Jones, let's see what we've got." He knelt beside his friend and pulled the medical bag open.

"You okay?" Steve asked, coming up beside Bucky. His eyes looked him over briefly before returning to Jim and Gabe.

"I'm fine," Bucky said. He looked Steve over. "What about you?" A long cut on one side of his face was dripping blood, but he looked otherwise unharmed.

"Just cuts and bruises," he said. He looked back at Bucky. "Good work up there tonight."

"Thanks," Bucky said. He nudged Steve's shoulder. "You too." He grinned. "Told you it would be alright."

"Well, I don't know about _alright_," Steve argued, waving over at Gabe.

"It's not your fault Gabe got shot," Bucky told him. "And that's something Jim can fix easy enough. He'll be fine. Everybody else is okay. Your first mission was a success." He nudged him and smiled when Steve looked at him. "Good job, 'Captain'."

* * *

It was early enough in the evening, they decided to apparate back to school instead of spending the night out in the woods. Jim had gotten Gabe fixed up just fine, though once they were back, he walked him up to the infirmary just to make sure. The rest of them showered and went to bed, and after the crash of adrenaline, Steve slept like a log.

He woke up later than he normally did on a Saturday, and after they all had their debriefing with Phillips, Steve spent most of the day doing homework. Peggy did manage to talk him into going outside for a while, and it was nice to be able to go outside in February without bundling up to his ears. It was also nice that it was chilly outside, since that meant that Peggy was snuggled up close to his side while they sat out by the lake. Steve wrapped his arm around her and smiled to himself, still amazed that this was actually happening.

She'd been there for the debriefing, but they talked about the mission a little more. Steve was still feeling guilty about Gabe getting hurt, and Peggy agreed with Bucky, that there was nothing Steve could have done about it. He supposed they were right, but he still felt like it was his fault.

"I've just never been in charge of anything before," he said. "Isn't that my job now, to make sure everyone's safe?"

"It's your job to make sure everyone's safe as far as you can control it," Peggy replied. "You plan the best you can, but there's always going to be an element of chance to these things."

"Yeah…" Steve sighed.

"Why is it your fault Gabe got shot?" Peggy wondered. "Did you shoot him?"

Steve looked down at her. "No."

"Is it Jacques' fault, since they were fighting together? Jacques should have kept him safe?"

"No. He did the best he could."

"Is it Bucky's fault then, since he was keeping an eye on everyone?"

"No. He can't see everything at once."

"What about Gabe? Should he just have moved faster and gotten out the way?"

"No, Peggy, what are you—"

"I'm trying to show you that it's just as ridiculous to blame yourself for this as it is to blame anyone else on the team," she said, cutting him off. She smiled up at him. "I know you feel like you're responsible for everything. That's what makes you a good leader—because everyone knows you're going to do everything you can to make sure it all goes right." She stretched her neck up and kissed the side of his mouth. "And the fact that you care so much is one of the things I love about you. But you can't go on worrying about things that aren't your fault."

He smiled. "How is it you know so much about this kind of thing?"

"I'm very wise," she said with a smile. She sat up a little straighter and kissed him again. "If it's still bothering you, I can help you take your mind off it."

"I thought we were supposed to be studying," Steve said, leaning in to kiss her. They had brought some books out here, but right now he couldn't remember what they were.

She laughed softly—he really loved that laugh—and nuzzled the side of his face. "We can take a break."

When he arrived back in the common room later, Bucky looked up from his chair by the fire with a knowing glance. "Studying hard?" he asked.

"Shut up," Steve told him, unable to stop smiling. He dropped down in the chair next to him. "You sleep okay last night?" he asked, arching a curious eyebrow. Bucky had been having more nights without nightmares than with these days, but Steve wondered if coming back into contact with Hydra for the first time might set anything off.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "I was too tired for anything to bother me, but…" He shrugged. "The fact that I'm fighting back makes it different this time. I think I'm gonna be alright."

Steve nodded, and the talk turned to their Transfiguration test that they both should have been studying for—Bucky, as it turned out, had been devoting more attention to Helen Thorpe this afternoon than he had to his homework.

Later that night, Steve lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Last night he'd been tired out from the mission and the crash of adrenaline, and he'd had no trouble sleeping. Tonight, he was still tired, but not enough. He'd been trying not to think about it all day, and between debriefing and Peggy and homework and Bucky, he'd been successful, but he was out of distractions now. He'd led his first mission and he'd led it successfully—they'd done what they'd been sent to do, they'd all come back alive, and the S.S.R. had more of the intel on Hydra they'd wanted. Everything had gone just as it should have. But, no matter how successful they'd been, the fact remained that there were people who'd been alive yesterday and now they weren't, and Steve had had a hand in that. Yeah, they were bad people, but they were still people. And this was a war, and people got killed in war, but Steve had just never…He felt stupid for not having thought about it before. Hydra had started this fight, and stopping them meant fighting back. And, when the stakes were this high, fighting back meant people were going to die. It was a logical, if unfortunate, chain of events, but Steve had never _wanted_ to kill anybody.

But now he had.

It bothered him, sitting heavily on his chest until he felt like he couldn't breathe, and he threw his blankets off and got up. He slid on his slippers and bathrobe and headed down the hall, stopping as he approached the common room. His plan had been to go down to the kitchen and get some of Willow's tea, but that would just put off the problem, wouldn't it? It wouldn't solve anything, and he'd just run into it again tomorrow night. And the one after that and the one after that. He sighed and dropped into a chair by the fire. He needed to figure this out.

The problem was, Steve still wasn't sure what he felt about the whole thing. He felt bad, but was that just because you were supposed to feel bad when you killed someone? He didn't necessarily feel bad that there were fifteen fewer Hydra agents in the world—actually, considering what they'd done to Bucky, he felt pretty happy about that—but he _did_ feel bad that he'd been the one to kill some of them. And he felt kind of sick at the thought that he was happy someone was dead, because how messed up was that? The whole thing had just happened so fast. There hadn't exactly been time to stop in the heat of combat and take it in. He'd been too busy punching and casting spells and using shields and trying to keep track of the rest of his team. He couldn't really remember the faces of the three guards he'd taken down, and did that make him some kind of heartless monster? But then, why did they deserve to be remembered anyway? He knew enough about Hydra to know the kind of stuff they'd done. The world was better off without them. But was he the one who got to make that call?

He scrubbed his hands down his face and groaned. This was so complicated. He was fifteen. He shouldn't have to be dealing with stuff like this.

"Steve? You okay?"

Steve looked up to see Bucky standing a few feet away, eyebrows furrowed in concern.

"Yeah," Steve said quickly. "I'm good. You alright?" Had Bucky had another nightmare and then not been able to find him?

Bucky huffed a laugh and shook his head. "I'm fine. You're not, though." He moved around closer to the fire and dropped into the chair next to Steve's. "What's up?"

Steve sighed. "It…I don't know…" He sighed again. "I killed someone yesterday, Bucky. And I don't…" He didn't know what to do.

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. It's a lot to wrap your head around," he agreed. He tilted his head to one side. "Tell me what you're thinking."

Steve shook his head. "I know they were Hydra. They were awful, terrible people, but I still feel bad that I killed them. But then, I feel like I should feel worse, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm happy they're dead. After the kind of stuff I know they did…After what Hydra did to you, I…It's not like I enjoyed doing it, but it feels good to have done it. And just saying that makes me feel like I wanna throw up, because it _shouldn't_. It should never feel good to end someone's life. What the hell is wrong with me that I would even think that?"

Bucky was quiet for a minute, and Steve could tell he was mulling over his words. "Can I ask you something?"

Steve nodded.

"What part of it feels good?"

"Huh?"

"About them being dead. What part of it feels good? Was it actually killing them? Like, physically hitting them with a spell or a bullet or whatever it was you used, and seeing them actually die?"

A sick knot twisted up in Steve's stomach and he swallowed down the urge to vomit. "No," he whispered.

Bucky nodded. "Or is it the fact that the world is just that little bit safer now, and _that's_ what feels good?"

Steve considered. He hadn't really broken it down that far yet, but…"Yeah," he nodded slowly. "I think it…I think it's that."

Bucky smiled encouragingly. "Then that's okay. It's okay to feel good about that."

"I still killed someone, though," Steve said quietly. He looked down at his hands. "That was never something I thought I would do." He swallowed hard. "It _hurts_," he whispered.

He felt Bucky's hand on his shoulder. "I know," Bucky said softly, and it hit Steve like a sledgehammer that Bucky _did_ know. "But I think," Bucky continued. "I think it should. This is something we're gonna have to do again if we keep doing this job, but I think it should always hurt. Because the people who don't care about human life are the ones we're trying to stop. And if it stops hurting, that's when you should be worried, because then we're just as bad as they are. We might get better at dealing with it one day, but…" He sighed and squeezed Steve's shoulder. "It should never be _easy_."

Steve nodded. It made sense. He didn't like it, but it made sense. "What do you think my ma would say?" he asked before he could stop himself. "If she knew I…" He swallowed hard, unable to finish the sentence.

Bucky's hand tightened on Steve's shoulder. "Look at me, Steve," he said. "Look at me," he repeated when Steve didn't comply.

Steve raised his head, blinking back the moisture in his eyes, surprised to see that Bucky's were watering too.

"You know what she would say?" Bucky asked. Steve shook his head. "She would say that you did a good thing. She would say that you did the right thing, and the right thing isn't always easy. She would be proud of you, because you made a hard choice, something that hurt you, so that other people would be safe."

The weight on Steve's chest felt a little lighter. "You really think so?" he whispered.

Bucky nodded, one side of his mouth going up in an encouraging smile. "I know so."

Steve smiled gratefully, nodding as he wiped at his watery eyes. "How do you do it?" he asked Bucky. "How do you…know all that? How are you okay with it all so fast?"

Bucky sat back and huffed a laugh. "Who says I'm okay with it?" He threw out an arm, encompassing the common room. "It's two in the morning. Am I in bed?"

Steve did chuckle at that. "So?" he prompted.

"So," Bucky said. He looked thoughtfully into the fire for a moment. "I'm not gonna lie, taking revenge on Hydra feels pretty great. The fact that I had to kill three people to do it, not so much. But it helps to realize that I'm not doing it for the hell of it. Hydra does it because they can, because they think it's fun, or because they think the people they're killing don't count. We're doing it to keep other people safe from them. When we start enjoying it, _that's_ when we turn into them." He sighed and looked back at Steve. "I know there's a bigger picture, but it helps me to look at the little one. Yeah, stopping Hydra is going to save lives everywhere, but last night, I killed a Hydra soldier before he could kill Gabe. I shot a guy that would have otherwise shot you, or Dugan or Jim. If I hadn't done that, they would have killed people I care about. It doesn't make it easier to do, but it makes it settle a little better in here," he said, tapping his chest.

Steve nodded thoughtfully. That _did_ help. "Thanks," he said. "I'm sorry," he added sincerely, not apologizing because he felt like it was his fault, but because Bucky, just like him, had crossed a threshold last night that neither of them had ever wanted to. It had happened for a good reason, but they were never going to be able to go back.

Bucky smiled sadly. "Me too," he said.

They sat there for a while, not saying anything, just watching the flames and thinking. It was hard, but Bucky was right, it _should_ be hard. Steve had still come out of this fight beat up, just not in the way he was used to. That had never kept him out of fighting for the right thing before, though, and it wasn't going to now. He looked over at Bucky. "Hey," Steve said.

Bucky rolled his head over to look at him.

"It _does_ hurt," he said. "And I'm sorry you…" He wasn't quite sure of the words he wanted, so he plowed on to his original point before it could get lost. "Thanks for not making me do it alone."

Bucky smiled warmly. "End of the line, Stevie. End of the line."

* * *

_So, not too bad for their first job, huh? They'll get some time to rest before Monday's update and a new mission. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story so far!_


	42. The French Connection

_Time for the second mission! Things get slightly more exciting, and perhaps don't go quite as smoothly as they did the first time around...  
_

* * *

They were in France for their second mission, and Bucky looked over at Gabe and smirked as they listened to Dugan grumble while they hiked through the woods. This mission was intelligence and extraction, and Dugan—even though he wasn't even their explosives guy in the first place—was incredibly put out that they didn't get to blow anything up.

They were hiking to what had once been Jacques' home village—hiking, because the whole area was heavily loyal to Grindelwald, and the less magic they could use, the less their chances of being noticed. They were going to have to camp at least one night, maybe two, depending on what kind of ground they could cover. Their job was to meet a spy, a Hydra defector that lived in the area. He'd been loyal to Hydra until about a year ago, when the villagers had risen up in revolt against Grindelwald's control and Hydra had sent in dark wizards with dragons and razed the village to the ground. The spy's family had lived in the village, and though they hadn't been a part of the revolt, they had been given no warning. It hadn't been so much a change of heart for the spy as it had been a desire for vengeance for his family that led him to turn against Hydra.

Jacques had been unusually quiet for most of the hike. His family had been killed long before the incident with the dragons—he'd been nine when he and his cousin had survived that attack and fled. Bucky wondered what it was like, coming back to a place that used to be your home—a place where you'd lost everything.

They reached the edge of the village just before sundown, and settled back in the woods to wait for dark. The village had not been rebuilt since the attack—there was hardly anyone left alive to do the rebuilding—but a camp of sorts had sprung up in its place. Tents and half-finished wooden buildings dotted the open area, most serving as make-shift bars, questionable shops and places for criminals to do business independent of the laws of the French government, the French Ministry for Magic, and even, in the darkest corners, the laws of Grindelwald. Shifty-looking men and women slunk between the tents and derelict buildings, keeping to the shadows but keeping wands, guns and other weapons clearly visible. Shouts and fistfights were common, and the occasional smattering of gunfire or burst of magic sounded through the night, largely ignored by anyone not immediately involved. The phrase 'bad neighborhood' was far too friendly a description for this place.

When they'd been setting up this plan, Bucky did wonder why Phillips didn't pick a different team to send in. Not that this wasn't the sort of thing they could handle, but it wasn't the sort of place a bunch of teenagers blended in. When they went in later tonight to meet the spy—Guillaume—only some of them would be going. Monty, Bucky and Jim looked too young, and while Gabe might have been able to pass for an adult, he—like Jim—was not white, and a lot of these guys had hang-ups about race as well as blood. Dugan was huge and he had a mustache, and he could easily pass for twenty. Steve's face was too young for that, but he made up for it in size. Jacques was still on the small side, but while they were prepping for this mission, he'd started growing out his beard—much to the surprise of the rest of them, who'd had no idea he was capable of that. Even Dugan had been jealous of how fast it grew. Sure, he kind of looked like a hobo, but it aged him a good five years if it aged him a day. The three of them were supposed to meet with Guillaume after dark, get his information and determine whether or not he needed to be extracted to somewhere safer. The rest of them were keeping watch—a far more interesting job in a place like this than it normally was.

"You be careful, Stevie," Bucky told him as they prepared to go in. He knew Steve was more than capable of taking care of himself, but right now, all he was seeing was Little Steve and a camp full of very bad men. He felt like he was tossing a kitten into a shark tank.

"Always am," he said with a smile.

Bucky snorted but smiled back. "We've got your backs," he told him. "Get in there and let's get this over with."

He would've felt better about having their backs if he could actually _see_ Guillaume's tent from here. It was a few rows closer to the middle, and though little microphones of Howard's allowed them listen in, once they were out of sight, the best they could do was watch the general area for suspicious characters. Which, given their location, was just about anyone who walked by.

They weren't dressed in the uniforms that Howard had made them, but darker, dirtier clothes that allowed them to blend in better. Jacques was acting like the leader—with the beard, he looked older than any of them, and though Steve and Dugan were conversational in French, Jacques, obviously, was best at it. Steve and Dugan walked a couple of paces behind him—the hired muscle.

They made it to Guillaume's tent without incident, and after they assured him—several times—that they were alone, he invited them in. The conversation took off in fairly rapid French after that. Bucky caught about half of it, but Gabe was translating the gist of it for them.

"According to Guillaume," he said quietly. "Hydra hasn't been marching to Grindelwald's fife for a long time. They've got their own agenda—_they_ want to be the ones in charge."

"Well, we already knew that," Jim scoffed.

Gabe inclined his head in agreement. "They're still playing nice, though, because they need more time."

"For what?" Bucky asked.

"This plan of theirs. They're building something."

"Again, we knew that," Jim said. "We were helping build it, after all."

"Ssh!" Gabe shushed him. "We didn't know what we were building, did we? He says it's called the Valkyrie."

"Which is…" Jim prompted.

"He doesn't know," Gabe said. "Top secret. All the factories are building part of it. There's a factory that wasn't on Steve's map where it all gets put together. He's not high up enough to know where it is. But he says…" He trailed off, listening intently. "He says when it's done, it will be powerful enough to take out all of Hydra's enemies in a matter of hours."

"Does he sound nervous to you?" Monty asked. He hadn't been listening to Gabe's translation, as he was fluent himself. Classical British schooling and whatnot.

"Yeah," Gabe nodded, after listening another second.

"That can't be good," Bucky said. "You guys stay here. I'm going to get a better look."

Gabe nodded, returning his attention to the radio. Bucky slunk as close to the edge of the camp as he dared. Most of it remained quiet, men huddled in their tents against the cold drizzle, occupied by their beer and cigarettes and business. But there were shadows shifting in the direction of Guillaume's tent, men who seemed to be loitering with no particular purpose, which might have seemed natural if it was a warmer night. Bucky frowned and made his way back to the others.

"He's saying something about the Tesseract," Gabe was saying. "Does anyone know what that is?"

"Guys, something's not right," Bucky said before any of them could answer. Their eyes all snapped up to him. "There's way too many people who are awfully close to that tent."

"You think it's a set up?" Jim asked.

"Guillaume's been feeding the S.S.R. for a year. This could be his way of getting back into Hydra's good graces," Monty suggested.

Gabe shook his head. "I think they might be there for him. He's saying he's not going to tell them anything else unless they promise to get him out of here. Guys, he's scared."

"We need to get in there," Bucky said, looking back at the camp.

"Whoa!" Gabe exclaimed, just as bangs and shouts and explosions sounded from the camp.

"What?!" Jim demanded. Bucky's heart dropped into his stomach and he clenched his fist around his wand.

"They jumped 'em!" Gabe said. "Ssh!" he warned, waving his hand at them to quiet down and switching the radio over to the headphones that had been waiting around his neck so he could listen more clearly.

"Monty, go see what's happening. Gabe, what's going on?" Bucky demanded.

"Gimme a minute…" One minute ticked on into two, agonizingly slowly.

"Definitely something going on around Guillaume's tent," Monty said, rushing back. "Rest of the camp looks quiet. I'm guessing staying out of things that aren't your problem is business as usual around here."

"It's quieting down," Gabe said. "They're all alive," he added with a smile, and the rest of them sighed in relief. "I can hear all three of them. It sounds like they put up a hell of a fight, judging by some of the language getting thrown their way. Bunch of Hydra goons were after Guillaume, and that two-faced little snitch is ratting the rest of them out to try to keep himself from getting shot."

Rage and fear churned in Bucky's stomach. "Can you tell how many of them there are?" They needed to get in there and get them out before it got worse.

"Hard to tell with just voices but…Ooh!" Gabe winced. "That sounded like it hurt."

"What?!" Bucky demanded.

"Jacques recognized one of the guys that killed his family and said something, that, while true enough, maybe wasn't the smartest thing. They hit him pretty good." His voice was tight with anger. He shook his head. "There's too much noise going on for me to get a good count, but I'm guessing there's at least ten of them."

"Okay, ten of them, four of us…" Bucky mused. Crap. Those weren't great odds.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Gabe said. "They're moving."

"Where?"

"I don't know, but they're talking about a more secure location. And they're walking."

Okay. If they were moving everyone to a secure location, that was good. That meant they were staying alive. And walking was good too. They were staying in the area.

"What are you smiling at?" Monty asked.

Bucky turned back to Gabe who was, in fact, grinning broadly. "Oh, Steven Rogers, you big, brave idiot. He knows we're listening, and he's telling me where they're going."

"How?" Jim wondered.

"Asking questions. Mentioning landmarks. I can tell it's annoying them and…yep, there it is. Got himself punched." He chuckled.

"Why is Steve getting punched funny?" Bucky snapped. He knew Steve could take it, but that still got his blood boiling.

"It's not. But before he quit talking, he was whining to the guy that hit him that twelve against four was hardly fair. I didn't know Steve even knew _how_ to whine."

Bucky did smile a little bit at that. Steve was a smart cookie.

Though he was aching to run in and do something right now, he waited and let Gabe keep listening in. "Okay, they've stopped," Gabe said after several minutes. "They're still in the camp, down on the south side of the clearing. In one of the actual buildings, but Steve couldn't get me more than that."

"Well, there aren't a lot of those. Should be easy to figure out which one," Monty said.

"They're waiting…Okay," Gabe said, looking up. "Whatever we're going to do, we've got thirty minutes."

"What happens after thirty minutes?" Jim asked.

"Some Hydra captain shows up and they turn over Guillaume and the other guys. They're thinking since they caught some S.S.R. people too, they're gonna get paid more."

"Okay," Bucky said. "Let's head down to the south end and find the building. Then we'll figure out a plan."

Quietly, they made their way around the edge of the camp, keeping back in the trees. The whole trip probably took five minutes, but Bucky was acutely aware of time slipping away. He tried not to think about that, to focus instead on formulating a plan. That was really more Steve's territory. Bucky was more than happy to follow other people's plans, but making one of his own—and for something of this magnitude—was a daunting prospect. But he had to. Steve was counting on him. Dugan and Jacques were counting on him. So he would do it.

At the south end of camp, finding the building was easy enough—there were only two, and only one of them had guards around it. Guards in Hydra-black with that red octopus on their pockets. The building in question was the stone remnants of an old bar, with recent add-ons of wood and canvas. The surrounding area was uninhabited—tents and other buildings were further away. No one seemed to want to get too close.

"Gabe, whatcha got?" Bucky asked.

"Not much. The three of them are in the basement. Don't know about Guillaume," Gabe replied. His tone suggested he didn't care much, and Bucky was inclined to agree. "They've got a couple of guards in the room with them, but any time they try to talk, they get hit and told to shut up. I don't think we'll be getting anything else."

Bucky nodded. "Okay." He was a little surprised how calm he was. Sure, he was mad as hell that people kept hitting Steve. But he needed to be calm to pull this off, so he was. "There's three outside. We need to take them down first, and quiet."

"Seems like a job for our master marksman," Jim said, patting the rifle slung over Bucky's back. He grinned. "I know a little charm that'll silence the gun."

Bucky smiled back. Finicky little charms were Jim's specialty. "Awesome. After that, three outside means nine inside, and if two are in the basement, there's at least seven between us and the rest of our team. Monty, what kind of gear do you have?"

"Standard explosives," Monty said, digging in his backpack. "But considering the state of the place, they'd bring the whole thing down."

"Anything small enough to use without bringing the building down on top of us?"

"Mmm…" he mused, digging through the contents. "Oh, here we go. I've been waiting to try this. Howard came up with these curse-bombs. Instead of exploding, they release a potion into the air. This one mimics the Confundus Curse. It'll only last a few minutes—since it's a mist, it's less potent, but it should work to help us get the first few shots off."

"What if they're not all in one room?" Gabe asked.

Bucky nodded. He'd thought of that, but there was no way to tell until they got there. "That's a possibility. I think we should split up when we get inside. Gabe, you and Jim work on clearing the building, and Monty and I will go straight for the basement."

Gabe and Jim looked at each other and nodded. "Right."

"Jim, is there any kind of magic shielding around the place?" Bucky asked.

"Not the house," Jim said, shaking his head. "But that anti-apparation spell is still over this whole area."

Bucky frowned. That wasn't good. They were just going to have to book it out of there when they were done. The plan was to get all the Hydra guys, but things could go wrong, and the people in the rest of the camp minding their own business could decide to get in on the action. And running…they could run, but the anti-apparation spell went on for a mile in every direction, and then they'd still be in enemy territory. And if someone was hurt…He shook his head. There was no other option. They'd just have to run for it. If they needed to apparate once they were beyond the barrier, they might have to risk it.

"Okay. Once we get out, we head that way," he said, pointing south. They were already on the end of camp, and it seemed like the most expedient way out. He pulled his rifle off his back. "Jim, gimme that silencing charm. The rest of you guys ready?" They nodded. He hoped he wasn't forgetting anything.

The guards were spread out but all within sight of the front door. They must not have been worried about anyone coming in any other way. Bucky found a place in the shadows where he could see all three of them, took a long, deep breath, and took aim. He felt an uncomfortable writhing in his stomach as the first guard fell, but he shoved it aside. He was doing this to save his friends.

When the last guard was down, he crept back to the others and they made their way toward the bar. Monty dared a quick peek through the window while he readied the bomb. "I only count three in the front room," he whispered. "Assuming there are still two standing guard in the basement, four are unaccounted for."

Bucky looked at Jim and Gabe, who nodded. "You two stick together," he told them. With four hostiles who knew where, the easiest way for one of them to go down was to go off alone. They nodded again.

Monty flicked a switch on the bomb and hurled it through the open window. Bucky heard it hit the floor with a _clank_, then a sharp hissing sound filled the room as the mist shot out of it. Monty was counting down with his fingers, waiting the seconds it would take for it to dissipate enough not to affect them. He hit zero and they leapt to their feet, charging into the room. The confused guards were stumbling around with no idea what was going on. They were dispatched of quickly, though the yelling coming from deeper in the building told them their entrance had not gone unnoticed.

A Hydra soldier burst through one of the doors, and they dove to the sides as he shot a curse at them, shattering the mirror that hung above the bar. "Go!" Jim shouted, waving Bucky and Monty toward the hall. "We've got this!" Bucky pushed himself up, barely registering the broken glass cutting into his palms, and ran. The sounds of furniture flying and bottles breaking roared behind them.

Finding stairs down was easy enough, but once they hit the lower level, the place was a lot bigger than it looked. "This way," Monty said, pointing out a trail in the dusty floor. They followed it cautiously through the darkness, rounding a corner and surprising both themselves and a Hydra soldier coming the other way. Bucky recovered first, and though his mind was suddenly blank of spells, his instincts were quick as ever, and his fist shot out, breaking the soldier's nose and sending him to the ground with a satisfying crash. He did not rise.

"Bloody hell, you pack a punch," Monty whispered, impressed. He conjured ropes to tie up the unconscious guard. Killing him probably would have been smarter, but neither of them could bring themselves to do it while he was unconscious. And he wouldn't be getting out of Monty's knots in time to give them any trouble anyway.

A little room father along the dust trail held their teammates' confiscated wands, Dugan's gun and Steve's shield. They picked them up and carried on. It was eerily quiet down here. The hallway ended with a door with a bar across the front. Bucky stood in front of it, his wand and Steve's shield raised, while Monty levitated the bar away. Surprised when no attack came, Bucky moved forward. The room was small and poorly lit, but clearly contained no one other than his friends and a man he assumed was Guillaume. "Where are the guards?" he asked.

"Dunno," Dugan replied. "They heard you guys busting in upstairs and ran off."

"Crap," Bucky breathed, moving farther in. That was two more they didn't know where they were. "You guys okay?"

"Assez bien," Jacques said. "En avez-vous gardé pour nous?"

"There's at least five of them left, don't worry," Monty assured him, flicking his wand to undo the cuffs on his wrists. "If Gabe and Jim don't get them all, you're welcome to a piece of them."

"Hey, Buck," Steve said, sounding a little distracted. Bucky's eyes widened as his wand light hit Steve and reflected off the blood covering the entire right side of his face.

"What happened?" he demanded, moving to unshackle Steve.

" 'm fine," he said. "Knew you'd come get us."

"Concussion," Dugan said, helping Bucky get him to his feet. "He took a knock to the head when we got jumped back in Guillaume's tent, and they decided they felt like roughing us up some more when they dumped us in here." Now that Dugan was in the light, he wasn't looking that great either. He was definitely limping, although he was steadier on his feet than Steve. Jacques was holding what appeared to be a broken arm tight against his chest.

Bucky supposed Hydra mistreating their prisoners shouldn't surprise him, but he growled all the same, fire churning in his gut. "Well, here," he said, handing Dugan and Jacques their wands. "Let's see if we can't return the favor on the way out."

Dugan cackled gleefully as he took his wand back.

"D'you get mine?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, but I'm not giving it back right now," Bucky told him, getting under Steve's arm to hold him up. Steve was taller than him, but only by a couple of inches—Bucky worked as a crutch, but not as well as Mini-Steve used to.

Steve blinked several times and swallowed hard, swaying a little as Bucky adjusted his position. "Pro'bly a good idea."

Bucky knew his head had to be killing him for him not to put up a fight, but he swallowed down his concern. They needed to make it out of here first. _Then_ he could worry.

"What about him?" Monty asked, nodding down at Guillaume who was staring up at them wide-eyed.

"Should take 'im," Steve slurred. "Need th' intel."

Bucky sighed. Steve was right, but Bucky didn't like it. "Fine." He nodded to Monty to set him loose. "But if you put so much as one toe out of line…" he said, pointing his wand threateningly at the spy.

Guillaume nodded quickly. "Of course, of course," he said in heavily accented English. "Merci, merci." He got shakily to his feet. Looked like Hydra had worked him over too.

They made their way upstairs, the sounds of fighting echoing above them. "Sounds like they could use help up there," Monty said.

"Oh, we're all over that," Dugan said happily. Jacques grinned and shot away into the darkness with his wand held high, Dugan lumbering along behind.

"Monty, you hang back and keep an eye on him," Bucky said, nodding at Guillaume. The guy was on their side for now, but Bucky still didn't trust him.

Monty nodded, and Bucky shifted under Steve's weight. "You know, this was easier when you were about a hundred pounds lighter."

Steve huffed a laugh and then winced. "Sorry," he said. "I can walk on my own 'f you need."

"No, you can't," Bucky said. "Don't worry, pal." He patted his chest reassuringly. "I gotcha." They reached the top of the stairs, and the sound of fighting was distant, but not distant enough. Bucky nodded for Monty and Guillaume to go through first—if there was trouble on the other side of the door, better someone with both hands free was there to face it.

The room at the top of the landing was empty, but the fight arrived before they were more than halfway across it—three Hydra soldiers in fierce combat with Gabe, Jim, Dugan and Jacques. Dugan was howling wildly, avoiding using bullets in such a tight space with his friends so close, but flinging hexes so fast Bucky could hear them whistling through the air. If the expression on Jacques' face was any indication, the man he was currently fighting was one of the ones who had killed his family six years ago—his friend was a small, hairy ball of rage flinging spells and French obscenities in such rapid succession the words were blending together. Gabe and Jim were looking worse for the wear, and Bucky had a brief moment to regret telling them to clear the building on their own, but had no more time to worry as they tackled the last, and largest of the remaining guards.

Bucky was aware of Monty on his left side shoving Guillaume aside and joining the fray. "Going down, Stevie," he said, giving him warning before letting him go to sink to the ground and diving in after Monty.

Monty leapt to join Dugan when Jacques shouted, "Il est à moi!" after he tried to help him. Gabe and Jim were too far away for Bucky to be of any help, so he started running, hefting up Steve's shield to block a spell Dugan's guard shot after him. He made it into firing range just as a curse hit Jim in the midsection, dropping him to the ground where he did not rise.

Bucky yelled and flung Steve's shield across the remaining distance, and it bounced off Jim's attacker's head with a resounding clang, dropping him like a sack of bricks. It bounced off the wall and flew back in Bucky's direction, and something in the back of his head made a note to ask Steve how to catch the freaking thing, because he was pretty sure it just broke his hand. Shoving that aside with all the other things to worry about later, he rushed to shield Jim as Gabe dropped beside him to check his vitals. Dugan and Monty gained the upper hand and their guard went down with a shriek of pain, then everyone's eyes followed the animalistic howl to Jacques and the soldier who was clearly dead at his feet, though Jacques was still firing explosive bursts of magic at him, as well as some very forceful kicks.

Dugan grabbed him from behind before he could land another shot. "I think you got him, big guy," he said.

Jacques was shaking a way that was reminiscent of a tiny, angry Steve, but he pulled his breathing back under control and nodded sharply. Dugan let him go. He stepped back over to the guard and spat on the bloody mess that was his face. "C'est pure mon père," he hissed.

Cautiously, Bucky lowered the shield. He looked down at Gabe. "Is he okay?" he asked, nodding at Jim.

Gabe grimaced. "He's alive, but I can't really tell you any more than that."

Bucky nodded worriedly. "Dugan, can you…"

"I got him," Dugan said, nodding and bending to pick him up. He came up a little wobbly on his bad leg, but he seemed stable enough.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Bucky said, acutely aware that their half-hour had to be almost up.

Monty returned to guarding Guillaume, ushering him out of the room with Dugan and Jim close behind. Bucky paused to make sure Jacques was okay, and he nodded grimly. He made his way back over to Steve while Gabe and Jacques headed for the door. Steve was sitting on the floor, watching the room with the air of someone trying to figure out which way the ground is tilting, when his eyes went wide and he yelled, "Get down!"

Bucky dropped like a rock, and he heard the thump of Gabe and Jacques hitting the ground somewhere behind him just as he heard the hum of a spell shoot over his head. There was an explosion of wood as the spell hit the bar, showering them with splinters, at the same time as a whoosh and a painful-sounding _thwack_.

Cautiously, Bucky raised his head and turned enough to see another Hydra soldier lying on the floor behind them, a blood-stained piece of rubble lying next to his head. Bucky looked back at Steve. "Nice shot, man," he said, impressed.

Steve lifted his mouth in a half-smile. "I aimed at the middle one," he replied.

Jacques chuckled at that, but Bucky shook his head. "No, don't tell me that. That is the opposite of reassuring." He got Steve's arm over his shoulder and levered him back up to his feet.

"Bucky, we gotta get out of here, man," Gabe said. He pointed at the man Steve had just taken down. "Me and Jim cleared the other guards out earlier. This one's new."

Oh, crap, their half hour was up. Right on cue, Monty burst back through the door. "There's more of them coming! We've got to move!" He joined Bucky at Steve's side and they started running, Steve doing his best to keep his feet moving so they didn't trip. They raced out the door and headed for the woods, the clear space between them and the trees suddenly seeming like an insurmountable distance. Bucky gasped and almost tripped as a spell shot past his ear, and he could hear Gabe and Jacques yelling from somewhere nearby in the dark. A hiss of pain from Monty was all the warning Bucky got before all three of them went down, skidding across the rocky ground. Guillaume appeared out of the dark, grabbing Bucky's hand and pulling him to his feet. He dragged Steve up with him, and Monty was getting up on his other side. They started running again, nearly stumbling again as they reached the treeline and an explosion rocked the night.

Dugan's victorious howl—followed by another explosion—laid Bucky's surge of panic to rest. He realized belatedly that Monty no longer had his backpack of explosives, and Dugan was tossing them back at their pursuers.

They had to slow down once they hit the trees, finally stopping to catch their breath. The night was quiet behind them, and Monty sank to the ground with a groan. Only half-supported now, Steve started to go with him, but Bucky managed to keep enough of a grip on him to slowly let him down instead of both of them falling. As soon as Steve was on the ground, he turned away from Bucky and started throwing up in the dirt. Guillaume was leaning against a tree a few feet away, breathing hard.

"Guys?" came a hoarse whisper through the trees.

"Over here, Gabe," Bucky replied, relieved. Gabe and Jacques came hobbling through the trees.

"Oh, thank God," Gabe said, seeing them all. "Where's Dugan and Jim?"

"Behind you," Dugan replied, making Gabe jump about a foot. Bucky sighed in relief. They were all here. He looked around the woods. What the hell were they going to do now?

"We being followed?" Bucky asked, looking up at Dugan.

Dugan shook his head. "Nope."

"Good job," Bucky said, trusting both Dugan's aim and passion for causing mayhem. "Does anyone know how far we are from the anti-apparation line?"

"At least half a mile," Monty groaned.

"Dude, I don't think half of us are in any shape to apparate, never mind whatever trackers Grindelwald's guys have out there," Gabe said, waving in the direction they were trying to go. He had a point. With as banged up as everyone was, if they tried apparating, somebody was getting splinched, no matter if they did side-along or not.

"Excuse me," said an unfamiliar voice, startling Bucky before he realized it was Guillaume.

"What?"

"Eet is not safe to remain 'ere. And beyond ze line…" He shook his head. "Eef someone can get to my tent, I have a…'ow you say? Tapis volant."

Gabe arched an eyebrow. "You have a flying carpet?"

Guillaume looked Gabe over, his expression failing to disguise the fact that he clearly wished someone else had asked, but he nodded. "Oui. Yes. We can, I sink, all fit. It is much more safety zan to walk through ze woods."

Bucky considered. It _would_ be a hell of a lot safer than hiking through the woods, especially with the shape everyone was in. And they could get somewhere safe enough to apparate, or somewhere with medical help. He narrowed his eyes. He still didn't trust Guillaume.

"Think he's telling th' truth," Steve mumbled. "Big carpet, all over th' floor of th' tent. Blue an' gold."

"Yeah, I saw that," Dugan said. "I could see it being magic. It had a…feel to it."

Bucky bit his lip. "Okay." Someone was going to have to go back in there to get it. Not Guillaume. He was staying here where people could keep an eye on him. Dugan had made it here carrying Jim okay, but he definitely was slowing down after whatever happened to his leg. Steve wasn't going anywhere, and Jacques' arm was busted pretty bad—he could walk but not carry anything. Monty, as it turned out, had gotten shot in the calf. Not near any important veins, but he wasn't walking anywhere. "Gabe, you up for a carpet run?"

Gabe nodded. "Yeah." He was bloody and dirty, but in one piece and staying on his feet.

Bucky stood up, wincing as he brushed the dirt from his hands and the cuts from earlier and whatever that shield had done to his hand made themselves known. "Alright, let's go. Dugan, get security set up and keep an eye out until we get back. Steve, you lay down, and Jacques, you make sure he stays there. Monty, get something on that leg, and then see if we can't wake Jim up." If Jim was awake, they might be able to solve the medical issue well enough to put apparating back on the table. Monty and Dugan both shot him a crisp salute, and then he and Gabe started the long walk back into camp.

It was late when they arrived—they'd skirted the south edge, moving around cautiously until they were back in their original hiding spot from earlier. Bucky couldn't believe how far off course things had gone since then. The commotion had settled down, the fires had gone out, and the darkness and quietness of the camp suggested that the general population was asleep. Not daring to light their wands, Bucky and Gabe crept through the sleeping camp, letting the meager moonlight guide them. Even in the darkness, Guillaume's tent was easy to spot—broken spikes of wood jutted up into the night, torn scraps of canvas hanging between them, fluttering in the breeze. They stepped carefully—scraps of wood littered the ground, the remains of boxes, or perhaps furniture. Either Guillaume's tent hadn't had much to offer looters or everything had been taken away already. Thankfully—finally, _finally_ something was going right this evening—the carpet remained. When they tried to pick it up, they discovered why.

"This thing's gotta weigh a thousand pounds," Gabe whispered. There was no way they were going to carry it all the way back.

"You think we can fly it back?" Bucky wondered.

Gabe considered the rug. "I guess." They started clearing the remains of the tent and debris from the top of it. When it was all clear, they sat down in the middle of it.

"How does it work?" Bucky asked, feeling a little silly.

Gabe shrugged. "I don't know. You don't exactly see a lot of these around."

Bucky had read about them in…one of his classes. At some point. "I think they use verbal commands." He looked down at the rug. "Up, rug." Nothing happened. "Go." Nothing.

Gabe pondered the rug. "En haut," he said after a minute. The rug rippled beneath them and rose slowly into the air. He turned back to look at Bucky, arching a pleased eyebrow. "It's a French rug."

Bucky snorted, but said nothing, just glad the stupid thing was working. It continued to rise until it was about twelve feet in the air, then hovered. Bucky leaned to the right and the rug started moving in the same direction. "I guess you lean to steer?" He sat up straight and the rug kept going right, switching directions a little abruptly when Gabe leaned to the left.

"Looks like it," Gabe agreed. "How do we go forward?"

Bucky scooted up closer to the front of the rug and leaned forward carefully. The carpet followed his directions again. A little jerkily, but without losing any altitude, they got the hang of steering and made their way back. When they reached the edge of the trees, Gabe commanded, "Arrêtez," and the rug stopped, though it remained hovering in the air. "Vers le bas?" Gabe tried, and it dropped to the ground with a painful thump.

"Ow," Bucky muttered, picking himself up off the ground.

"Sorry," Gabe apologized.

"Stay here with the rug," Bucky said. He didn't want to try to get it through the trees. "I'll go get everyone else."

They were able to make it all back to the rug in one trip—Dugan carried Jim, who remained worryingly unconscious, Monty limped along with one arm over Jacques' shoulders, and Bucky reluctantly accepted Guillaume's help getting Steve to his feet. Getting situated on the carpet took a little more time. Steve needed to sit in the middle, so his swaying didn't interfere with the steering of the carpet, and, though Jim had yet to do any moving, they decided the middle was best for him too, in case he started to roll around. Dugan sat with his back to Steve, propping him up, and his bum leg hanging off the back of the carpet. Guillaume sat at the front since he could actually drive the thing, which left Bucky, Gabe, Jacques and Monty to squeeze in where there was room. It was a big rug, but there _were_ a lot of them.

They decided to head south, which was actually away from their ultimate destination of Hogsmeade, but they would come to friendly territory sooner. Guillaume coaxed the carpet up even higher until they were above the trees, and they took off under the starlight.

It was freezing. Bucky was glad they were huddled together, and he was especially glad that he had his back against Steve's left side—something to do with the serum and Steve's new metabolism meant that he ran a little warmer than everyone else. So, at least half of Bucky was warm. Unfortunately, now that the fight was over and the adrenaline was wearing off, he had very little to distract him from how much everything hurt. He was pretty sure his right hand was broken, and every muscle ached from running and ducking and fighting and falling. He was able to distract himself somewhat by picking stray bits of glass out of his hands, but that only lasted so long.

The ride was quiet, and reasonably smooth—with the exception of the two times the motion and the concussion proved too much for Steve's nausea. He had the presence of mind to lean over and throw up off the edge of the carpet instead of all over Gabe, but the sudden motion sent the rug careening unexpectedly off to the right both times.

"Sorry," Steve whispered after the second time, pressing a hand to the side of his head.

"It's okay," Bucky said, twisting a little awkwardly to get his arm over his back. "Hang in there, Stevie." Steve needed to lie down and he needed to sleep, and Jim…Bucky didn't know what Jim needed, but it was more than any of them could do. He still hadn't moved.

"We in friendly territory yet?" he asked some time later. The sun was starting to come up.

Jacques was consulting in French with Guillaume, and after a moment, he nodded. Evidently they'd passed a town a few miles back that marked the edge of Grindelwald's holdings.

"Get us a few more miles away from that town, then set us down," Bucky ordered. At the very least, they needed to hit the ground and sleep—they were all exhausted, and the last thing they needed was someone falling off the rug.

They set down a few minutes later in a small clearing. A chorus of groans rose up from the heap they all collapsed into once they were flat on the ground. It was with great difficulty that Bucky made himself sit up. "Gabe," he asked. "Tell me that radio has the range to reach home."

Gabe sighed. "Not right now." He sighed again and sat up. "Lemme see what I can do, though. I may be able to jerry-rig something out of the two of these." They'd been using the non-magical radio, but he pulled the magical one from his bag and rolled away from the rug to set to work.

Bucky took Jacques and Dugan's backpacks, and he and Jacques set to making breakfast. It had been a while since any of them had eaten. The oatmeal and tea they whipped up was not particularly exciting, but it was food. Steve could no longer sit up at all, and he had turned a worrying shade of gray, but Bucky was able to prop Steve's head up on his leg and get a little bit of food in him, which, so far, he was keeping down.

"Got it! I got it!" Gabe crowed jubilantly. "Oh, Peggy Carter, you have the voice of an angel!" he enthused into the radio.

Bucky gestured for the headset and Gabe handed it over. "Great work, man," Bucky said, slipping the headset over his ears. "Peggy? Peggy, can you hear me?"

"Bucky?" came Peggy's voice. "Are you alright?"

Bucky looked back over their group. "Well, we're alive, but we're in pretty bad shape."

"What happened?"

"We got Guillaume and we got him out, but Hydra was there waiting for him and we had to fight our way out. Steve and Jim are hurt pretty bad, and we've got some broken bones, gunshot wounds, and…" He sighed. "We need help, Peggy. We're safe, but we're not getting out of here on our own."

"Right," Peggy replied, and Bucky could tell she was worried after that report, but she kept her voice calm. "Do you have any idea where you are?"

"Southern France," Bucky said, knowing that wasn't very helpful. "Jacques," he asked. "What was that town we passed?"

"Gabian," Jacques replied.

"Somewhere south…kind of east of Gabian," he told Peggy. "Sorry I don't know any better."

"No, I can work with that," she said. "Listen, I'm going to put together a portkey for you. That's the easiest way to get the wounded home if you can't apparate. I'm going to work on that, so I'm not going to talk to you anymore, but keep the line open so Howard can work on fixing where you are a little more clearly."

"Okay. Thanks."

He slid the headphones down some, one ear on the background noise of Stark clanking around and muttering things and complaining that it was too early in the morning for this. He looked back at his team—Gabe eating his breakfast like it hurt, Jacques gingerly massaging his broken arm, Monty wincing as he adjusted the makeshift bandages on his leg, Dugan being very careful not to move his leg, Steve, who was the color of the oatmeal they'd just eaten and somehow looked like he was about to topple over even though he was lying flat on his back, and Jim, who hadn't moved in six hours. Bucky's lip curled as he looked over at the spy, sitting off to one side. Guillaume had _better_ be worth this.

"Alright, I'm on my way," Peggy said suddenly in his ear. The radio clicked off, and a few seconds later, a spot appeared in the air that looked like someone had grabbed a fistful of the landscape and started to twist very hard, then Peggy was standing in front of them, stumbling slightly and dropping the shoe she'd been holding.

Bucky jumped up and grabbed her arm, helping her catch her balance. He realized she'd stumbled when she landed because the shoe she'd been holding—and had used as a portkey to get there—was one of her own and her balance was off. "Thanks," she told him. She handed him the umbrella she had tucked under her other arm and bent to pick up the spent portkey and slip it back on her foot. "Bloody hell," she said, looking them all over as she straightened. "You weren't kidding. What the hell happened?"

"Lots of Hydra soldiers," Dugan replied, tipping his hat at her with a smile. "Guns, spells, explosions—all that fun stuff." He couldn't exactly get up to give her one of his trademark bear hugs, so he flung his arms around her knees instead. "Man, it's good to see you!" he enthused, hugging her legs and looking for a moment like the world's largest, hairiest five-year-old.

Bucky smiled briefly, then scowled over in Guillaume's direction. "Hydra wanted him," Bucky said, hooking a thumb back at the spy. "They jumped him while Steve and Dugan and Jacques were in there, and he ratted 'em out to try to save his own skin. He _did_ get us out here with his flying carpet after we rescued him," Bucky admitted. "But if Phillips doesn't want him, I'm gonna hex him into next week."

"I'll help," Gabe said, raising a hand.

"Moi aussi," Jacques added. Guillaume swallowed nervously.

Peggy did smile just a little bit at that. "Perhaps we can arrange something." She looked down at her watch. "Right, we've got two minutes until the next portkey activates. Can we get everyone touching the umbrella?"

They all gathered back on the rug, everyone's hand somewhere on the umbrella. Peggy thought Jim needed to be actually gripping it, not just touching it, so Bucky gripped part of the umbrella with his broken hand and used the other to wrap Jim's hand around part of the handle.

Steve hadn't noticed Peggy until she was sitting next to him, guiding his hand to the umbrella. "Hey, Peggy," he said with a lopsided little smile.

"Hello, Steve," she replied, grimacing at the blood that was dry, but still all over his face. "How are you feeling?"

"My head hurts," he said lazily, as if untroubled by this information. "How come there's two 'f you?"

"There's only one of me," she informed him, laying one hand on his cheek to prove it.

"I see two," he insisted. His crooked smile got a little bigger. "They're both real pretty."

Bucky snorted at that, and Peggy looked up and him and smiled before looking back down at Steve. "Thank you," she said, mostly with a straight face. "That's very sweet." She looked back down at her watch. "Alright, hold tight everyone. No, Steve, keep your hand on the umbrella, just like that. Here we go."

Bucky had no memory of his first journey by portkey, and given how disoriented he'd been at the time, he could see why if it had felt anything like this. He was being pulled and spun through space, and though it felt like something was yanking him forward, it definitely felt more like the world was whooshing by him, instead of him actually going anywhere. They hit a stone floor somewhat abruptly, eliciting pained gasps from everyone but Dugan, who cursed loudly. Steve was throwing up again.

Bucky blinked several times to clear his vision and realized that Peggy had been forward-thinking enough to have the portkey bring them all straight to the infirmary. Nurse Rains was already hovering over them, along with Professor Kendall, Professor Phillips, and a couple of people Bucky thought he'd seen down in Howard's lab.

Steve, Jim, Monty and Dugan were rushed away to the nearest beds while Gabe, Jacques and Bucky got to their feet and one of the S.S.R. guys escorted Guillaume away. Gabe was helping Jacques over to the nearest empty bed to sit down, and Bucky suddenly wasn't sure what he should do. He didn't realize he was swaying on his feet until Peggy appeared at his side, holding on to his arm to steady him.

"I'm alright," he protested. "I'm just…"

"You're exhausted," she corrected him. He didn't realize she'd been moving him until she was steering him to sit down on the empty bed next to Steve's. She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him, a little to the side so she wasn't blocking his view of Steve, who looked like he was finally asleep. There was a bowl of water on the stool beside her, and she picked up one of his hands and started picking out the bits of glass he'd missed and dabbing at his many cuts with a soft cloth. There must have been some sort of potion in the water, because it stung a little, but the warm water felt amazing. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.

Bucky went back over the events of the evening, starting with them listening in over the radio as things went wrong. Maybe it was exhaustion setting in, but now that they were back here and safe, it all seemed really far away. It was like he was telling Peggy the story of what happened to someone else.

When he finished, he blinked and realized he was lying flat on his back on the bed and Peggy was pulling the blanket up over him. His broken hand didn't hurt anymore, and both his hands were bandaged and felt clean. "What—?"

Peggy smiled. "It's alright," she told him. "You can get some sleep now."

" 's'ev'rybody okay?"

She smiled. "They are. Bullet wounds and broken bones are healed, Steve's got the medicine he needs to put his head right again, and Professor Phillips sorted out the curse on Jim. He's a bit shaky yet, but he's awake. Everyone's going to be fine." She reached down and squeezed his shoulder warmly. "You did a good job, Bucky. Everyone's safe."

Bucky smiled, relieved, even as sleep started pulling him away. "You tell Becky we made it back okay?" he asked sleepily.

Peggy nodded. "I'll let her know." She brushed his hair back and gently kissed his forehead. "Get some rest."

She moved away from his bed and crossed over to Steve's, sitting down on the mattress, stretching her legs out alongside him and carding her fingers through his hair. Some of Steve's color was already back. That was good. And Jim was…Jim was good now too. They were all…

Bucky fell asleep before he could finish the thought, but the word he'd been going for was 'okay'.

* * *

_So, not super smooth, but they all came out alright. Bucky does a fair job of being in charge when he needs to. For the devoted HP readers out there, yes, Peggy was not entirely correct on saying you need to have a firm grip on a Portkey to get it to move you, but, you know, she's fifteen and she's making Portkeys, so I figure she's still ahead. See you on Friday! I'd love to hear what you think of the story in the meantime!_


	43. The Howling Commandos

_So the team has had a couple of missions and they're getting the hang of things, but they're still missing a couple of things. Can't just keep calling them 'the team', can we? We're gonna need a name... And also, perhaps, some sort of protective headgear for our dear Captain.  
_

* * *

Ambush by Hydra and serious bodily injury to seventy-one percent of the team aside, the fact that they accomplished their objective and all came out alive technically classified their second mission as a success. Phillips was calling it that anyway, and Steve decided he was right, though he wished he remembered more of the mission. He was kind of embarrassed about the fact that they'd gotten caught and he'd gotten beat up enough for him to have those gaps in his memory in the first place, but he seemed to be the only one bothered by that, so he was trying to let it go. Like Peggy said, there was only so much he could control. Sometimes, things just went sideways. It also felt kind of nice to know that his team could survive with him out of commission. Far from making him feel useless, it actually lightened some of the pressure of leadership.

He _did_ remember enough of the mission to know that Bucky had taken charge and had done it well. He'd put together and pulled off the rescue and gotten them all out of there. That surprised Bucky, but it didn't surprise Steve—it was just an extension of the way he always took care of people. Bucky was generally an easy-going guy, but if something was threatening what he was protecting, the smart thing to do was to get the hell out of his way.

So, yeah, Steve remembered about half of that mission to extract Guillaume. He remembered absolutely nothing about the mission after that. He did remember planning for it, but he had no recollection whatsoever of having gone on it, and was really confused when he woke up in the infirmary with his head pounding and a very worried group of people sitting around his bed.

Apparently, they _had_ been on the mission, and even though he hadn't gotten knocked out until the end, nothing anyone said jogged his memory of the event. That fact did nothing to reassure Bucky, who looked torn between being overjoyed that Steve was alive and furious that he'd made him worry this much. Nurse Rains made him stay another night over in the infirmary, and forbade him from participating in any more training for the remainder of the week, but when Steve was finally freed from the infirmary, Bucky marched him all the way down to the basement and Howard's dungeon laboratory.

"Howard, Steve needs a helmet," Bucky declared, throwing the door open.

"What?" Howard said, crawling out from the insides of some machinery he was working on.

"What?" Steve asked, looking over at Bucky with a raised eyebrow.

"A helmet," Bucky repeated, eyes on Howard.

"Bucky, I don't need—"

Bucky slapped him. "The good Captain," he said, still addressing Howard. "Needs a helmet so we can keep all of his big, dumb brains inside his skull where they belong." The fact that Bucky was not referring to him by his name told Steve that he was still pretty upset about this, so he decided not to argue.

"Oh," Howard said, looking Steve over. He sniffed thoughtfully. "Yeah, alright. Here, sit down over here, Steve, and let me take a few measurements."

Steve complied, lest he risk Bucky's wrath again, and Howard took some measurements and made notes and said he should have something in a couple of days.

"Bucky," Steve started as they left the dungeon.

"You could've died, Steve," Bucky growled.

He still didn't remember what happened, but if their places had been reversed, he knew he'd be demanding the same thing of Bucky. Steve dropped it.

The helmet, once Howard was done with it, turned out to be less of a pain than Steve thought it would be. It fit snugly over his head, covering part of his face and the top and back of his head. There was a strap that fastened under his chin to keep it from moving around, and once it was on, it was comfortable enough that he was almost able to forget he was wearing it. It was a deep blue that matched his uniform, and though he was a little self-conscious about it at first, no one said anything about it. Although, Dugan seemed to enjoy leaning one arm on Steve's shoulder and rapping the helmet with his knuckles.

Once Nurse Rains declared him fit for duty again—which took much longer than Steve thought necessary—they started planning their fourth and final mission of the term. Steve had broached the idea of continuing missions over the break—it's not like the war was going to stop just because Hogwarts was having Easter Break, but Phillips shot that down. They were still students, he reminded Steve, and the agreement they'd made with the government that he'd mentioned before Christmas still stood. Talented though they were, they were still part-time soldiers. And, he'd added with a wry smile, it was hardly like they were the only soldiers in the war.

Their fourth mission was to take out another Hydra factory. It was one of the two they'd already gotten exact locations for, and it was time to wipe it off the map. Much to the delight of Dugan and the other explosive aficionados on the team, the best way to do it was to follow Schmidt's example and blow the place sky high.

While Steve and his team were given command of the operation, a couple of the other student units had been assigned to join them. Before they blew the place up, they needed to rescue the prisoners being held there, and, though it meant more people he was going to have to keep an eye on, Steve agreed that numbers would be helpful in that regard. It wasn't a slight on their abilities as a team.

What _did_ get his hackles up, though, was the fact that one of the two teams that would be joining them was the 89th, the second in command of whom was Ethan Green.

"Oh, hell, no," Gabe said. They were sitting around a table in the corner of Howard's dungeon fine-tuning their strategy for the mission. He tossed the roster down onto the table with a growl. Jacques shot a glance at it and muttered something uncomplimentary in French.

"I hate that guy," Jim agreed. Steve had only recently learned that the reason Ethan had never appeared to give Jim any trouble over the past four years was because Jim had knocked three of Ethan's teeth out the first time he'd tried anything and Ethan had since mostly kept his distance.

"I know he's got that whole line about trying to be a better person now and everything," Bucky said. "And, you know, good for him, or whatever. But, seriously, Peggy…" Peggy had been the one to select the additional teams. Bucky threw out an arm to take in the rest of the group. "Given his history with us, what the hell were you thinking?"

Bucky had to be really upset to talk to Peggy like that, and Steve thought maybe he should say something, though he had no idea what. Steve knew she got where they were all coming from—she had no love lost for Ethan either. He figured she knew what she was doing, but he _did_ wonder why she'd chosen his group.

Peggy arched a disapproving eyebrow. "Look," she sighed. "Calling Ethan Green a cockroach is an insult to the vermin of the world. Don't think I don't know that. The fact remains, however, that the 89th has been on more successful extraction missions than any of the other teams, and they are very good at it. If we want to rescue prisoners, they're the guys we want helping us, and if we take them, we take him. I'm not asking you to like him. Hate him all you like. What I'm asking you to do is to put on your big boy pants and work together for the collective good. Think you lot can manage that?"

There were several red faces around the table, accompanied by a mumbled chorus of, "Yes, ma'am."

"Good," she said. "Moving on."

Once they finished going over the rest of the plan, they broke up for dinner. Steve lingered while Peggy packed up her papers. "Hey, um," he started. "I'm sorry about the whole thing about Ethan." Steve wasn't happy about the assignment either, but he figured as the leader, he should refrain from complaining in front of the team. But he probably should have reined the rest of them in. He'd just never found himself in between his friends before.

Peggy smiled. "It's alright. Believe me, I'm not happy about it either. I did actually consider not using them just because of him, but…" She shrugged.

"The goal is to save lives," Steve agreed. "We can take the higher road."

"Good," she said, looking a little relieved. "I know it's hard for you too, considering everything he's done."

Steve nodded. "I did believe him when he said he'd try to do better, though. I mean, I don't think I'm ever gonna like him. But if he can be big enough to apologize and try to set things straight, then the least I can do is let him try." He grinned. "Besides, if he starts causing trouble, I can always just punch him. Pretty sure I can take him now."

Peggy laughed, and bounced up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "Shall we go to dinner?" she asked, twining her fingers through his.

Before Steve could answer, there was a knock on the door, and Bucky stuck his head back in. "Peggy?" he asked. "Oh, um, hi, Steve." For a second he looked like he was contemplating leaving, but he moved all the way into the room. "Listen, Peggy, um…"

"You know what?" Steve said to Peggy, realizing what Bucky was trying to do. "I'll see you at dinner."

"No, it's alright," Bucky said, though he looked kind of embarrassed. "If I can be a jerk in front of you, I can apologize in front of you too." He looked up and met Peggy's eyes. "I'm sorry. I was upset about Ethan, but there was no call for me to talk to you like that. I shouldn't've done that. I'm sorry."

Peggy smiled at him warmly. "Thank you. I appreciate that. And I understand. No hard feelings." Bucky smiled back, cheeks still a little red, but relieved. "You want to come have dinner with us?" she offered.

Bucky agreed and they set off for the Great Hall. They talked about Quidditch and end of term exams and not the mission. Steve really was trying not to over-analyze things like he and Bucky had talked about a while back. He was getting better at it.

Saturday morning was overcast and misty. After apparating into Austria, they found the weather much the same. Steve guessed it would help them stay harder to spot, but it wasn't particularly pleasant. He rounded up his team, the 89th and the 107th—Bucky's old unit—and they started walking. It was a seven-mile hike to the factory. It would've been nice to have a plane to drop them off inside the anti-apparation zone again, but there were thirty of them, and it would have taken more than one plane, which would have drawn more attention. But the hiking was okay. It'd been four months since Steve had taken the serum, and being big and healthy actually felt normal most of the time now, but every now and then little things—like the fact that he could hike seven miles without collapsing—were still kind of exciting.

They arrived at the factory late that afternoon. Like when Steve had broken in to the factory by himself, they had decided a night entry was the way to go, so the units broke up to set up their positions. The 107th was going to focus on the guards and other external defenses, freeing up the 89th to get in and get to the prisoners, and Steve and his team to get in, get what intel they could, and blow the place to hell.

"Is it weird, not being with the rest of the 107th?" Steve asked Bucky as the groups split off.

Bucky shrugged. "Maybe a little. But Donovan's in charge now, and he knows what he's doing. They're in good hands."

That hadn't quite been what Steve had been wondering, but it made sense that was how Bucky would take it.

"Hey, Sarge, can you come give me a hand with this? I don't have enough hands to hold it all together," Gabe said, kneeling on the ground a few feet away and pulling things out of his backpack. Steve wondered who he was talking to, but Bucky walked over and started helping him reassemble the radio pieces.

"Sarge?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, you know," Dugan said, looking up from where he and Jacques were re-packing the explosives and weapons in the order they thought he would need them. "You're the Captain, and he's your Number Two, so…"

"Oh." Steve supposed that made sense. And Dugan _did_ like to give people nicknames. "When did that start?"

Bucky sighed irritably, not looking up from whatever he was helping Gabe do. "On the last mission. The one where you got your stupid skull caved in. You really don't remember anything, do you?"

"Technically, I think it started on the mission before that," Monty said, smacking Dugan's hand and pulling one of the explosives away from him. "Don't touch this one," he warned. He looked back up at Steve. "The one with Guillaume, when Bucky had to take over for a while."

Steve looked back at Bucky, who looked a little bit embarrassed, but accepting. As Steve well knew, once Dugan gave you a nickname, it wasn't going anywhere. And it definitely fit with Bucky's propensity for looking after everyone. (Though there was still a little piece inside of Steve that marveled somewhat at the fact that _he_ was in charge of things and Bucky was following him. It seemed backwards, somehow. But they'd had that discussion before. And Bucky really seemed like he didn't mind.)

"Speaking of names," Jim put in. "I was thinking we need one."

"We who?" Gabe asked.

"We us," Jim replied, drawing a circle with his finger to indicate the group of them. "We're just kind of 'the team'. That's lame. If nothing else we could have a number, like those guys," he said, waving a hand in the direction the 107th had disappeared.

Steve inclined his head. There was something to that. "We can think of something. Not now, though."

"Well, sure, not now," Jim agreed. "But we should put it on the list."

The radio attached to Steve's shoulder crackled. "Captain, can you hear me?"

"I gotcha, Donovan," Steve replied. "What's up?"

"We've run into a hitch with security, sir. Shielding spells around the fences are minimal, but they've got Dementors."

Well, that wasn't good. "How many?"

"Eight that we can see, but it's a bit hard to tell with it getting dark now. Colin's trying to get a better count."

"Okay, let me know when you have that." Steve clicked the radio and switched the channel. "Eighty-nine? You guys reading me?"

"I hear you, Rogers," came Ethan's voice.

Steve swallowed down the instinctive wave of dislike that Ethan's voice conjured and the urge to point out that there should be a 'Captain' in there somewhere. "Be advised, we've got Dementors circling the factory. One-oh-seven's still going to cover us, but have your boys be ready to throw out Patronuses just in case."

"Yes, sir."

Donovan came back over to their group, and Steve spent the next several minutes with him and Dugan discussing if and how this changed their entry plan. Gabe, meanwhile, had gotten the rather cumbersome radio reassembled (Howard had already promised a sleeker version by the time they got back from Easter) and had been trying to find a frequency Hydra was on. "Guys!" he hissed. "I got it! Things are quiet in the factory—they have no idea we're out here, but, guys, Schmidt's coming."

"Schmidt?" Steve demanded. No one had been expecting the head of Hydra.

"Mm-hmm. Some kind of inspection. They're expecting him before too long."

If they could take out Schmidt along with the factory, that would be an incredible step, but…Steve looked around. They were kids, and Schmidt was arguably the most powerful dark wizard of the century. None of them were ready for that—including him. Not that that had ever stopped him before, but Steve didn't think he could ask that of the rest of them. If Schmidt showed up before they were done, then they would give him hell, but they should try to get this done before then.

"If he shows up and Zola's with him, that little snake is mine," Bucky growled.

They moved out shortly after. The 107th had broken through the shielding spells in three spots around the perimeter, and wire cutters made short work of the fence itself. They went in first, followed at each entrance by some of Steve's team and some of the 89th. The first several guards went down without anyone noticing, but soon the attention of the rest of them was drawn, and a firefight began. Spells and bullets were flying, and Steve could see the silver streaks of Patronuses chasing Dementors through the dark. Though he didn't like leaving the 107th out here on their own, he had a job to do and they could handle theirs, so he barreled on ahead, his shield in front of him and Bucky behind him. They fought their way through, and suddenly the chaos was behind them, the factory looming large in front of them.

"Rogers! Over here!" Ethan called, waving from a door. A fallen Hydra guard lay on the ground, propping it open. Steve's team and the 89th were hurrying inside. They ran into a few more guards inside—some were headed outside, but many were staying put. They split up when they hit the factory floor, the 89th heading for the prison level. Steve, Bucky and Jim engaged the soldiers, keeping them off the backs of Dugan and Monty, who were planting explosives, and Gabe and Jacques, who headed up to the administrative level to get what intel they could find.

Steve was fighting three guards at once, a combination of magic and fists. He positioned himself near the door, and it seemed like every time one went down, another appeared to take his place. It was too tight between the walls and machinery to make use of his shield as a projectile, but it served admirably as an extension of his arm for punching. One of the guards swept out with a kick Steve wasn't expecting and he went down, but years of being a tiny punching bag had him instinctively rolling as he fell, out of the way of where fists and feet were expecting him to land. He hurled the shield up into the air, catching one soldier on the chin while he pushed himself up off his back and drove his feet into the chest of a second. The guard stumbled back and Steve shot a spell at him to make sure he stayed down while he rolled and sprang to his feet again.

Two new guards appeared, and for a moment Steve felt like he was dancing as his enhanced reflexes helped him dodge spells whizzing by so close that he could feel the magic singing past. He picked up his shield from where it had fallen and pulled it up, blocking a spell and sending it shooting back into the chest of the soldier that had fired it. He hit the ground with a shriek, deep slashes slicing across his chest and pouring blood. Steve took a moment too long staring in mingled relief and revulsion and felt a foot slam into his back, driving him forward into the wall of machinery. Suddenly, he was incredibly glad that Bucky had forced the helmet on him—even with it, his ears were ringing from hitting the metal so hard. Had his head been unprotected, he definitely would have been unconscious on the floor.

More soldiers were making their way down the hall to his left, and from where he had fallen, Steve could see Jim and Bucky further down the floor who were becoming increasingly outnumbered. Alright. Enough of this. "_Reducto_!" he yelled, aiming his wand at the towering machinery across the aisle from him and pulling his shield up over his head. An explosion rocked the air, drowning out the yells of Hydra agents being buried in the rubble and the clanks of cogs and pipes as they ricocheted off Steve's shield.

He shoved the shield up, scattering debris, and rushed across the floor to join Jim and Bucky. Bucky's lip was split and bleeding and his face was bruised, and Jim didn't seem to be using his left arm much, but they were holding their own. Bucky flashed him a grin as he joined them, nodding quickly at the pile of rubble before refocusing on the fight. "Little flashy, Stevie."

"Punching my way out was taking too long," he replied, and Bucky chuckled, then grabbed Jim and yanked him behind him as Steve spun in front of them with his shield raised, blocking the barrage of spells that came flying their way.

"Wondered how long it would take 'em to figure out how to work together," Jim panted, ducking down to shoot a couple of hexes under Steve's shield and into the legs of two of the guards who hit the ground howling.

Spells suddenly came shooting in from a new direction, and Steve whirled to face it and saw Ethan Green and Kyle Markham, a Slytherin Seventh-Year Steve didn't think he'd ever spoken to, running their way and joining the fight. "Prison level's clear!" Ethan yelled, missing the guard he was aiming at with his wand, but dropping him to the ground with the gun he'd pulled from his belt. "Just waiting for word they're past the fence."

Steve shot him a quick nod. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gabe and Jacques reappear and join the fight. "Last explosives are set, Cap," crackled Dugan's voice through the radio at his shoulder.

"Let's work our way out, guys!" Steve called. "North door, head for the fence! Me and Bucky'll watch our six!" The rest of the group fell back, running for the door. Steve and Bucky retreated a little more slowly, blocking spells and firing shots of their own back into the thinning jumble of pursuers.

They made it to the door and Steve shoved Bucky out in front of him, pausing only long enough to fire a spell at another wall of machinery as he followed him out. The fighting seemed to have died down outside, but a lot more things were on fire. They made their way across the yard, but the 107th seemed to have taken care of most of the guards outside. "Give me a count!" Steve called into the radio at his shoulder.

"107th all accounted for, sir!"

"89th is all here!"

Steve had seen all of his team leaving the factory, so he yelled into the radio, "Light it up!"

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Monty responded gleefully. Steve couldn't actually see him or Dugan, but he could hear Dugan's victorious wolf-howl from all the way across the yard. Jim joined in as the first explosion lit up the sky, then Gabe, then Jacques, and before long the night was echoing with explosions and howls. Even Bucky cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a whoop as the final fireball shook the ground beneath them.

Donovan was shaking his head, but he was smiling. "I can't believe we pulled that off."

"Bloody mental, you lot are," Colin said from behind him. He was so covered in grime that Steve only recognized him by his voice. "An entire factory's worth of guards to fight off, and you think, yeah, alright, seven of us ought to do it, then you stand around howling at the moon like maniacs." He shook his head, but his tone was impressed.

Steve grinned. "Good job tonight, guys," he told them. He nodded toward where the rest of them were crowded. "Is everyone okay?" Donovan was in charge of the 107th, but he also had some pretty good medical training.

"Everyone got out alive," Donovan replied. "But four of my lads aren't walking anywhere any time soon, and the 89th has a nasty stab wound. I don't have a good count on the prisoners yet, but Arthur's working on it. If you can spare Jim, we can get started patching people up while the 89th works on transport."

Steve turned around, but Jim was already moving forward. "On it, Boss," he said. He gestured at his left arm as he walked off with Donovan. "Can you pop this back in the socket for me before we get started?"

"Does anyone know where Alistair is?" Steve asked turning back to his group. Alistair was the leader of the 89th, a Seventh-Year Ravenclaw. Steve hadn't seen him since they split up to break through the fence.

"Here, Captain!" Alistair replied, appearing out of the dark. "Sorry, we were working on getting a count of the prisoners."

"I thought Arthur was doing that."

"He's counting wounded—we were counting everyone."

"Right. Whatcha got?"

"We've got two hundred and fifty-three, and they're in quite a state, some of them, but we should make it out of here alright. Ethan's setting up transport now."

"Side-along apparation?" Steve asked. That was what they done last time.

Alistair shook his head. "No. Takes too long. Ethan's got a knack for a portkey, so he's setting up several of those. Gets bigger groups out faster and it's easier on the wounded."

"Good thinking," Steve agreed. He hadn't known that about Ethan.

Alistair returned to his group, and Steve made a round through the group of prisoners, checking in and answering questions, and assuring all the non-magical soldiers that everything would be explained soon. (He was really glad that wasn't his job. He wondered if Phillips always did that, or if he had an agent for that.) By the time he got back, Gabe had retrieved and disassembled the radio, Jim and Donovan had finished their medical rounds, and Ethan was walking over with a broken piece of tree branch.

"You've got two minutes on that," he said, handing the branch to Bucky.

"Thanks," Bucky said tightly, as if it pained him to do so.

Steve and Ethan looked at each other, and Steve found he couldn't really think of anything to say, now that the fight was over. "Um, good job tonight," he said finally. "You and your guys."

Ethan nodded and kind of smiled. He turned to look at the rest of the group, couldn't think of anything to say—neither could any of them—so he saluted and walked back to where his group was gathered around the rock serving as their portkey.

"I still don't like him," Bucky said, which broke the tension and got a laugh out of everyone. They all grabbed onto the branch, and a few seconds later were yanked out of the forest and dropped to the ground outside the Hog's Head.

Steve and Donovan went in to give their reports to Professor Phillips while the rest of the guys started the hike up to school. (Alistair was coordinating getting the POW's sorted out and would give his report later.)

"Sounds like you boys did alright," Phillips said when they were done. "Good job."

"Thank you, Sir," Steve said.

"Thank you, Sir," Donovan echoed. He looked over at Steve. "Wouldn't mind working with these howling commandos again, Sir," he continued, turning back to Phillips. "Mad, the lot of them, but they get the job done."

Phillips shook his head and waved them out.

Bucky was outside the door waiting to walk up with them. "Hey, Buck," Steve said, nudging him with his arm. "You know how Jim said we needed a name?"

Bucky nodded.

Steve grinned. "What do you think of 'The Howling Commandos'?"

* * *

_And thus the Howling Commandos were born. See you Monday!_


	44. Dances, Dreams, And Disagreements

_Time for a bit of downtime before gearing up for another term of missions. Cue some nice family stuff and, for PrincessStarberry, Big Steve sitting weird in a chair like he's still Little Steve._

* * *

There were a couple of weeks left in the term after their last mission, and it was a weird mental switch going back into full-time student mode. O.W.L.'s were still a whole term away, but end of term exams were now, and the teachers seemed to think that testing like it was the O.W.L.'s was a good idea.

The common room was quieting down for the night, and Bucky shook himself with a start, blinking several times to clear his vision and realizing he was dozing off on top of his Herbology textbook. Maybe laying on the floor in front of the fire wasn't the smartest idea. (Sure, it was spring now, but it was a rainy spring, and it was chilly inside the stone castle. Some magical radiators would not go amiss in this place.) He rolled over and sat up, catching Steve out of the corner of his eye and shaking his head. Steve had said once that being bendy (and, thus, sitting weirdly in chairs) was a perk of being little. He was currently lying on his stomach draped across the seat of the chair, his chin resting on one armrest and one leg propped up on the other and sticking out into space, while the other leg was somehow twisted up over the back of the chair. Bucky could only assume one of the things the serum had enhanced was Steve's 'bendiness'.

"That never looked comfortable when you were small enough to fit in the chair," Bucky said. By all the laws of physics, there was no way his torso should have fit lengthwise across the seat of the chair like that, never mind the impossibility that was whatever his legs were doing. "You're six feet tall, dude, how does that even work?"

"I'm not six feet tall," Steve said, not looking up from the Care of Magical Creatures book that was on the floor. His long arms extended off the armrest his chin was leaning on, dangling above the book. He lazily flipped one of the pages.

"What?"

" 'm five eleven. They measured me."

"Oh, well, my mistake," Bucky replied. "That extra inch obviously makes all the difference."

Steve snorted into the chair and waved his arm in a half-hearted attempt at a throw, though there was nothing in his hand. "Alright," Bucky said, pushing himself to his feet. "I think it's time for bed." He whacked Steve's leg with his textbook.

Steve grunted unhappily. "Leeme 'lone. 'm studying."

"Steve, you're six minutes away from falling asleep. I don't care how flexible you are, you sleep like that all night, you're not gonna be able to walk in the morning. And I'm not carrying you to bed this time."

"What do you mean, 'this time'?" Steve asked, casting a sideways look at him. "You've never carried me to bed before."

Bucky snorted. "Seriously, when you were tiny, like once every finals week."

"Nuh-uh," Steve replied eloquently.

"Nyuh-huh," Bucky retorted. "You always stay up too late studying. Come on." He whacked him in the leg again. "I don't think I can carry all five-feet-eleven of you. I could probably drag you, but I don't really feel like it."

"You're a jerk," Steve complained sleepily, aiming a kick at Bucky to get him to stop hitting his leg, but rolling back into the chair and stretching out again, sitting up straight with a yawn. "Fine."

They moved down the hall and fell into their beds, and Bucky slept uneasily that night, though it wasn't dreams of Hydra and Zola that bothered him like they still sometimes did. Venomous Tentacula and Devil's Snare sprouted up out of his textbook, twining vines around his legs and growing after him as he tried to run away. Professor Perkins appeared out of nowhere and told him he really should know by now how to handle these plants and that would be a failing grade for him. Then he turned into a Flutterby Bush and the little winged leaves took off into the sky. Steve was trying to help but he was stuck riding a griffin and didn't know how to get down, since he'd fallen asleep before he got to that part of the textbook.

Bucky woke up the next morning and decided that while it was infinitely better than his nightmares, maybe he should try stopping his studying a little earlier in the evenings and spend a little time winding down before bed.

They finished their exams and packed up and got on the train, and when they hit King's Cross Station, Bucky didn't say much when Becky started teasing Steve about kissing Peggy goodbye in the door. Steve could fend for himself, and it distracted Becky's attention from his own kiss goodbye with Helen.

Bucky's parents were both there to pick them up when they hit New York, and he hugged them happily, glad to see his pop back to walking without a limp again. "Wand away, dear," his ma said to Becky as they got in the car. "You know the rules."

Becky sighed, but put her wand away in her bag. She really enjoyed levitating things. She and Esther had spent a good portion of the train ride home levitating little balls of paper around the compartment and throwing them at everyone but Dugan, who they were both still a little afraid of. Becky looked out the window for a minute, then turned back into the car, grinning mischievously. "So, Mama," she began. "Did Steve tell you about his new girlfriend?" she asked, drawing out the word 'girl' in a sing-song voice.

Steve turned as red as Peggy's Gryffindor scarf and Becky snickered. "Rebecca," their ma chastised, though she was smiling. "I think it's Steve's business whether he wants to talk about it or not." She did sit up a little straighter so her eyes could catch Steve's in the rearview mirror and arched a curious eyebrow.

Steve groaned, covering his face with his hand. "Um," he said after a minute, face still behind his hand. "I, uh, me and Peggy Carter are kind of…"

"They're an _item_," Becky declared.

Steve groaned again and Bucky's pop chuckled. "Alright, Rebecca, that's enough. Why don't you tell us about your classes?"

Becky's attention diverted, Bucky nudged Steve with his elbow, who lowered his hand. His face was still scarlet. "Why'd she never do this to you?" Steve asked accusatorily.

Bucky grinned. "Who says she didn't? Me going out with girls is boring for her now, but back when I first started doing it? You just didn't see it 'cause you didn't live with us then. And she was _way_ more obnoxious about me and Vicki—she was only nine then."

The rest of the ride home was uneventful. After dinner, they sat in the living room for a while and listened to the radio. Bucky got up to dance with Becky when some jazzy music started playing. "You know," their ma said, watching them with a smile. "There was a flyer up for another one of those dance contests at the church on Saturday—if you two are still interested in that sort of thing."

Becky gasped excitedly. "Oh, can we, Jay, can we? Please?"

Bucky smiled. He knew she'd missed getting the chance to dance with him over Christmas since he'd been sick. "Sure, Munchkin. Sounds like fun." She squealed delightedly and clapped her hands and started immediately telling him what steps they needed to work on. Bucky chuckled. "Bossy little thing, aren't ya?"

She stuck her tongue out prissily. "Well, your footwork's sloppy, so _some_body's gotta get you back in line."

Steve snorted into the book he was reading, but did not look up.

"Oh, don't you start, Stevie," Bucky warned. "At least I actually _have_ footwork. That's far too generous a term for whatever it is you do with your feet."

Steve threw a couch cushion at him, and Bucky's ma decided it was time for them all to go to bed.

Over the next week, Bucky practiced with Becky, brushing up on his dance moves. He _was_ a little rusty. Once she was satisfied that his footwork was back up to snuff, they decided to go out into the alley around the back to practice some of the more flamboyant moves. Both of them were tall enough now that unless the goal was to slam Becky into the ceiling, the living room no longer worked for flipping or jumping. Becky swept the area by the fire escape clear of trash, and Bucky and Steve managed to move one of the dumpsters over, and they ended up with a nicely-sized space. They would bring the wizard radio down, since it didn't need to be plugged in, and set it on the ground and find a good channel. (Bucky was a little worried about how much it would hurt if he dropped Becky onto the concrete, but she pointed out that he'd never dropped her before, and if he did, it would probably hurt just as much on the wooden floor of the living room or the dance hall.) They'd practice more elaborate routines, and if Steve wasn't in the garage tinkering with his motorcycle, he'd sit on the stairs and watch.

The night of the dance arrived and, aside from being excited about the competition, Bucky was enjoying being in a place where everyone was just so happy. Like he'd told Steve a while back, he had his big picture and his little picture of why he was fighting Hydra. The little picture—Steve and the rest of his friends and making sure they all made it out okay—was always right there, but sometimes the big picture got kind of abstract. But now he could see it sharp and clear, and it was bright and loud and full of music and people laughing. It was Mr. Garcia showing Elian how to keep hold of his trumpet and flip the pages of his sheet music at the same time. It was Becky showing off her new skirt to her friends. It was a crowd of girls whispering and staring at an oblivious Steve who was helping Mr. Kowalski set up chairs. It was Mrs. O'Brien setting out cups by the punch bowl. It was his pop leaning in to whisper something in his ma's ear that made her smile and laugh softly and slip her arm around him. It was something good in the world that reminded him there was a lot more like it out there, and _that_ was what he was fighting for.

The music started and everyone took their positions, spread out around the room. They started with the Balboa, a closer dance, since there were so many people out there. It was fast, though, and Becky laughed happily, grinning and leaning in by his ear to be heard over the music. "Aren't you glad I made you fix your footwork?"

"Shut up and dance, Munchkin," he laughed, twirling her out in a spin.

They made it through that round and the Lindy Hop round, and though their feet got a little tangled together during one of the slides in the Shag, they kept their rhythm and made it through to the final, freestyle round.

Enough people had been eliminated by that point that there was a lot more room on the floor. Becky was in her element, twirling confidently, laughing and throwing her arms out and enjoying having the attention of the room. They stepped and they kicked and they spun and they jumped and Bucky had missed, this, he really had. A triumphant shiver ran down his spine as he realized this was one more thing he'd reclaimed from the mess Hydra had made. One more way he'd beaten them.

The music reached a crescendo, and Bucky hefted his sister up off the ground, swinging her from side to side and straight up in the air in what, if he had to say so himself, was a _phenomenal_ Sidecar. (Although, he did hear his mother audibly gasp above the music when Becky was completely vertical and upside down in the air.) Becky swung down gracefully, landing on one bent leg with the other extended out to the side, one arm around Bucky's waist and the other flung out triumphantly.

Applause replaced the music in the air and Bucky pulled her up to her feet, smiling broadly. "Nice job, Munchkin," he beamed, and she laughed and hugged him.

"We did it, Jay, we did it!" she squealed.

"James Buchanan Barnes, are you trying to give your mother a heart attack?" their ma asked, approaching from the side with their pop.

Bucky chuckled and Becky spun around excitedly. "Did you see that, Mama? Did you see us?"

"Yes, dear, I saw you, and I think it took about ten years off my life."

Bucky's pop laughed. "I think what your mother is trying to say is that that was very impressive," he told them. "You two did a good job tonight."

Slower music started to play so other couples could come out and dance while the judges deliberated. Bucky got some punch and slipped out the back door, suddenly feeling very aware of how red and sweaty he was. The night air cooled him down and he smiled up at the sky.

"Hey, Buck," Steve said, sticking his head out the door a few minutes later. "They're getting ready to announce the results. Come on back in." Bucky followed him back inside and Steve grinned. "You guys were awesome tonight."

"Thanks," he said with a smile. "You wanna learn, I'm sure Becky would be happy to practice with you."

Steve laughed. "Yeah, I'm seeing that ending with me tripping over my own feet and hurling her into a wall, but thanks for the offer."

Bucky laughed. That probably _was_ how that would turn out. He could only imagine the kind of grief Becky would give the both of them after that.

* * *

Steve had wondered at first why, as they settled into the routine of vacation, it felt like it had been such a long time since they had had a break. He realized it was because he wasn't really counting Christmas. An undercurrent of worry and tension had been woven into the Christmas holidays, what with everything that had happened to Bucky and his being sick and Mr. Barnes being gone. This was the first time at home in a long time that everything felt alright.

Steve had gotten back to working on his motorcycle again. He felt like it was close to getting finished—although, what he'd do with it then, he wasn't sure. He could get a license and ride it around town. If there was a way to get it back to school…He wasn't sure if he'd be allowed to ride it there, but he couldn't shake the feeling it would be cool to use it on a mission sometime. Who knew what Howard could do with it. But first, he had to get the thing running.

He spent a lot of time sketching too. In the afternoons when Bucky and Becky would practice dancing out in the alley, sometimes Steve would go out and sit on the stairwell, sketchbook on his lap. He'd done a few with his regular pencils, and one or two with his magic ones. Becky had been enchanted by one he'd done of her and Bucky spinning—her skirt flared out and twirled as Bucky spun her away and back in again, and she'd asked to see it so many times that he finally asked her if she wanted to keep it. She'd set it carefully on a shelf in her room, propped up next to the second-place ribbon she and Bucky had brought home from the competition that night.

The weather alternated between warm and sunny and the chilly rains of late spring. When it rained, they sat inside, playing games (Bucky was back to his undefeated streak in Poker), doing a story or two with Becky, or just talking. They tried not to talk too much about their missions—there were definitely some scarier details Becky and Mrs. Barnes were better off not knowing. They talked about classes instead, or their upcoming O.W.L.'s or their friends. Bucky had picked up the knitting again that Becky had tried to teach him over Christmas. He was still awful at it, but he was determined to conquer it and make something recognizable by the time he was done. Thus far, he could work without dropping the needles anymore, but a recognizable product was a long way off. Steve, out of deference to the fact that Bucky had never made fun of Steve back when he was terrible at magic, tried to be encouraging. Becky was not above mocking him.

"What even is that, Jay?"

"You're the one who gave me the pattern," Bucky grumbled.

"I know. And I still can't tell what it is," she said.

"It's supposed to be a scarf."

Becky arched a skeptical eyebrow. "All you do to make a scarf is make a square. Then some more squares, and then you stick 'em together." She eyed him suspiciously. "Do you know what a square looks like?"

Bucky narrowed his eyes. "Watch it, Munchkin," he warned.

"Because the evidence would seem to suggest you don't," she said, gesturing at his pile of yarn.

Steve had let them argue a little longer before stepping in once they started to throw things. Going off of the tangle of yarn, Becky did seem to be right, but Steve would never say that.

The one thing Easter break had in common with Christmas was Bucky's nightmares. They'd gotten so much better—they were far less frequent, and Bucky had reached a point where he was able to get back to sleep on his own most of the time. Somewhat to Steve's surprise, they didn't seem to be triggered by any of their missions. He would have thought the proximity to Hydra—especially that time they went to the factory—would have brought up some bad memories for him, but the nightmares seemed to come and go on their own schedule.

Steve still woke up when Bucky woke up—he'd gotten in the habit of it when the dreams had come nightly, and the sound of Bucky gasping awake was still enough to jar him out of sleep. But he would wait to see if Bucky said anything, and if he did, Steve would get up and they would walk into the common room and sit and talk until Bucky felt settled again.

He hadn't had any since coming home, however, and tonight it seemed his subconscious decided to make up for that. Steve woke up not to a sharp intake of air and haggard breathing, but to a frightened little voice whimpering in the dark. "Bucky?" he asked, sitting up and fumbling in the dark for the chain on the lamp. The light clicked on and he saw Bucky curled up in a ball halfway down his bed. He shrank back from the light like it burned.

"Bucky?" Steve said again, throwing off his blanket and crossing over to Bucky's bed.

"No," Bucky whimpered. His eyes were still shut, hidden behind the arms that shielded his face while his hands twisted agonized knots in his hair. "Please."

"Bucky, it's okay," Steve said, reaching down to grab his shoulders.

Bucky moaned and curled in on himself even tighter. "No, I don't want it. I don't want it, I don't want it, please, don't make me," he pleaded, soft and shaky like a frightened child.

"Bucky, wake up," Steve said, shaking him gently.

"Don't make me, please, don't make me," he whispered. "I can't do it, not again, please…"

"Bucky!" Steve shook him a little harder and his eyes snapped open and he hurled himself away from Steve so forcefully that he would have gone off the side of the bed if it hadn't been pushed against the wall. He didn't really notice when he slammed himself into it.

"Steve?" he asked, sounding very unsure about it, his eyes wide and wild as they roamed the room.

"Right here, Buck," Steve said gently, shifting a little so he was back in Bucky's eyeline. "I'm right here. You're okay—you're safe, you're home." He laid a hand carefully on Bucky's arm, and he could see the wildness drain out of Bucky's eyes as he let out a long, shaky breath, the touch pulling him back to reality again.

"Steve," he said again, and it wasn't a question this time. He pulled his arm out of his grip and scrubbed his hands down his face with a sigh. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Buck, it's okay."

Bucky shook his head, face still behind his hands. "I'm supposed to be getting better. I was doing so good. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you," Steve said. "And you _are_ getting better. You just have a few more pieces you still have to figure out."

Bucky lowered his hands, his face red and his eyes looking down. "It's been so long since I had one this bad, I hoped I…" His voice caught in his throat and he swallowed hard several times, clearly unable to say anything else. Tears welled in his eyes and he squeezed them shut, shaking his head.

"Come here," Steve said, and though Bucky tensed at first, he let out a shaky sigh and allowed himself to lean in under the arm Steve wrapped around him. "Listen," Steve said softly as Bucky cried quietly. "I don't know why things work this way. Why you could be doing so good, and then have such a bad night. It doesn't seem fair. But one bad night doesn't mean you're too weak to hold yourself together. Hell, a thousand bad nights wouldn't mean that. It doesn't mean you're broken, or anything like that. It just means you had a bad night. That's all. It happens to everybody," he added, thinking of a night over Christmas break where he'd woken up in a cold sweat and hurried to the bathroom to throw up so he wouldn't wake Bucky, the ghost of his ma's dying breath cold on his face.

Bucky didn't say anything, but more of the tension drained out of his shoulders. He continued to cry, and after a minute, Steve heard his breath hitch several times in his throat before he rasped, "I can't stop."

"You don't have to," Steve assured him. He could feel the moisture starting to soak through his shirt where Bucky was crying against his shoulder, and something painful twisted in his stomach but he just cinched his arm a little tighter around Bucky. "You can let it out. I gotcha."

He always wondered, when he sat up and tried to comfort his friend on nights like this, he always wondered if he had the right words. He guessed this time he did, because Bucky continued to cry instead of insisting he was fine and rolling away and getting all red and huffy. Obviously, Steve didn't want him to cry, but if he needed to, then Steve was glad he felt safe enough to do it.

Steve thought he had a pretty good idea of what had happened to Bucky—they'd talked about it a lot. But even so, it was just an idea. He hadn't been there, he hadn't felt it and lived it, and tonight he couldn't imagine what kind of horror had swam up out of the depths of Bucky's memories to torment him. He wondered if Bucky had ever felt this helpless, back when he was the one comforting Steve. He wondered if Bucky had had any idea back then how much it helped Steve just to have someone to hold on to. He hoped this was helping Bucky as much as it had helped him.

Bucky cried for a long time, and Steve just held on while he did. When he finally stopped, Steve looked down and saw that he'd fallen asleep. He smiled and, rather than try to move and risk waking him up, Steve just shifted back a little, reaching one hand carefully behind him to pull Bucky's pillow up between his back and the wall. He turned the lamp off and leaned back, keeping one arm around Bucky and allowing his own eyes to shut.

Bucky apologized again in the morning for crying so much, looking embarrassed about it again, but Steve insisted it was fine and Bucky looked like he believed him.

The rest of the break passed uneventfully. The sun stayed out for the last week, and one Saturday they went down to the fair at Coney Island. Becky was old enough now to have her own pocket money to buy popcorn, but Steve knew that as much as Bucky complained about it, he couldn't say no to those eyes of hers. They fed the birds and rode some of the rides and it would seem the serum hadn't made him immune to everything, because Steve still threw up after riding the Cyclone, though he was able to hold it until they were back on the ground.

They left for school with the usual hugs and kisses and reminders to write and admonitions to be careful. Steve wondered what sort of missions Phillips would have for them this time around.

Their first briefing was the afternoon of their first full day back. To Bucky's dismay, it was another intelligence-gathering mission, though Phillips assured him it was in a safer area than their last one to get Guillaume. To Steve's dismay, Phillips wanted Peggy to go with them.

"What's the matter, Steve?" she asked after the meeting broke up.

"What?"

She turned around from where she'd been gathering up her papers and looked at him expectantly. "It's not as though you're hard to read, you know. Something about this mission bothers you, and though I suspect I know what it is, why don't you just tell me?"

Steve sighed. This was an argument he would have liked to have had some time to prepare for. "I don't…I don't feel particularly comfortable with the idea of you coming with us on this mission."

Peggy crossed her arms and leaned back against the table. "I thought that was it. And, pray, tell me, why not?"

"Well, it…it's dangerous."

"Yes." She seemed to want him to elaborate.

"Something could happen to you."

"Something could happen to you every time you go on a mission. Actually, something frequently does. You think I don't worry about you?" she asked.

"No, I…I know you do, this is just…"

"Just what?"

"It's different."

"How?"

"Because…" In the past five years he'd so very rarely argued with Peggy that he was getting all flustered and the words for his reasons were all going out of his head. "Because you could get really hurt. And I, I'm supposed to keep you safe, and…"

"Aw. How sweet," she said, in a tone that suggested she found it anything but. "So, let me get this straight, I can't come on the mission because it's safer for me, as the little woman, to stay at home while my big, strong man goes off to fight the war to protect me?"

"What? No, that's not—"

"That's certainly what it sounds like you're saying," she interrupted. "Because unless you worry this much about everyone else on your team…"

"I do, actually," he said truthfully. "All the time." His biggest fear was that someone under his command would get hurt, or worse, because he failed to protect them.

That seemed to bring her up short. "So the fact that I'm a girl has nothing to do with you not wanting me along?" she asked, still looking a little defensive.

"What? Peggy, no, I…" Yeah, okay, it's not like there were a lot of girls out there fighting the war, but that didn't mean he didn't think she could do it. "When have I ever…" He shook his head. "In the five years we've known each other, when have I ever said or done anything that would make you think that?" It actually kind of hurt that she would, and something of that must have come through in his voice, because the fire in hers died down.

"Then what is it?" she asked.

He sighed. "I know you're smart, and you're tough, and your magic is, quite honestly, better than anyone's I've ever seen. You're amazing. But this is combat. It's different than Quidditch, or, or fights in the courtyard, or…You can't just go out there the same way, and—"

She silenced him by reaching up and placing a finger over his lips. She was smiling again, though, so that was good. "I know that," she said. "Phillips didn't tell you I'd finished my combat training, did he?"

"No," Steve replied, feeling his cheeks start to go a little red.

"Why do you think I haven't gone out on missions with you before?" she asked. "I know an untrained civilian is nothing but a hazard out there, but I am no longer an untrained civilian."

"Oh." Okay. "See, that would have been nice to know earlier."

Her smile widened. "Sorry. Is that really all you were worried about?"

"That was pretty much my whole argument, yeah."

Her cheeks got a little red. "Right. Well, in that case, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm rather accustomed to people thinking I can't do things because I'm a girl, but, you're right, you've never…"

"It's alright," he told her with a smile, glad to know she didn't actually think that little of him. He looked down at his watch. "We've got time before dinner. You wanna go down to the training area on the Quidditch field and show me what you've got?"

"What I've got?"

"You said you finished combat training, so, I wanna see it. And not," he added, raising a finger to cut her off, because he could see that fire coming back into her eyes. "Because I don't think you can do it. We trust each other, you and me, right?" He waited for her to nod. "You say you can do it, I believe you. I need to see it because you're on my team, and as the captain, I need to know how everybody on my team works." When he and the rest of the Howling Commandos had gotten together, Phillips had made sure they spent time training together, learning each other's moves and styles of fighting. Steve knew the rest of the guys' strengths and weaknesses, what kinds of spells they liked to use and how they moved. If Peggy said she could do it, she could do it—Steve just needed to get that same picture so he'd know what to expect out on the field.

"Oh. Alright," she said. "That makes sense." She grinned mischievously. "Shall we go a round or two?"

* * *

_Tune in Friday for Peggy's first mission! In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you about what you think of the story._


	45. In Sauer's House

_Time for Peggy's first mission! Cue the espionage and intrigue...  
_

* * *

Peggy knew Professor Phillips had gotten a lot of pushback for allowing her into the S.S.R. in the first place, never mind the fact that she was going on a mission. He'd told her as much, and added that while he'd been confident that she could do this, it would be nice if she did it well so everyone would get off his back. She'd worked with him long enough to know a compliment when she heard one, though she did feel just that much more pressure about the whole thing. Not that that was new. She was used to working under pressure. She'd been doing it all her life.

The reaction to the fact that she was going on a mission from her dorm mates was mixed. Some were impressed, some curious, and some wondered why in the world she wanted to go in the first place. Kelly was one of the ones wondering if she'd lost her mind, but she knew it was important to Peggy, so after her initial expression of her opinion, she'd not said anything more and tried to be supportive.

"I made you something," she said to Peggy the night before they left.

"Really?" Peggy asked, curious. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she saw what Kelly was holding out to her. "Those are my trousers."

"I know, just…here," Kelly demonstrated. She held the pair of trousers up and stuck her hand into one of the pockets. To Peggy's surprise, Kelly's arm sunk in all the way to her shoulder. "I put an expanding charm on the pockets." Kelly was very good at those. "I thought, seeing as you'd be out tramping around in the woods and breaking into buildings and things, it might come in handy to be able to carry a lot of stuff in a small space. Pens and lockpicks and screwdrivers and…I have no idea what you're actually going to need. You'd have to roll it up quite small to get it past the mouth of the pocket, but you could put a blanket in there, or maybe a spare pair of shoes, and, Lord knows, those boys you're with aren't going to be able to do much in the way of cooking, so you could—"

"Kelly, that's brilliant," Peggy said, cutting her off before she could get rambling. Kelly smiled, and Peggy took the trousers from her. Like Kelly had said, once you got past the mouth of the pocket, there was all sorts of room in there. She stuck her hand in and rotated her arm around, barely able to brush the edges of the expanded space. "You really did that for me?"

Kelly nodded. "I still think you're mad, but if you're really going to do this, I didn't want you to get into trouble because you didn't have something you needed."

Peggy beamed and hugged her friend. "You're the best," she told her.

They set off early the next morning. Though she knew all the boys of the Howling Commandos and counted them as friends, she'd have been lying if she said she hadn't been waiting for a little bit of resistance or trepidation to her coming along. Like she'd told Steve, it was just something she was used to. It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, when none came. She'd done a bit of training with all of them over the course of the week—Steve had wanted them to be familiar with how she moved, and her with them. They'd all done just fine in the team exercises, though she'd had to remind/threaten each one of them that she'd sparred with not to go easy on her. (The hardest one to convince of that had actually been Steve. She supposed it _was_ a bit unfair on him, expecting him to hit his girlfriend, even if they were just sparring. Still, if he wanted to see what she could do, he needed to put a bit of effort into it. She'd put him on the ground twice, hoping that might goad him into trying a little harder, but she finally told him if he didn't quit pulling his punches, she was going to hex his ears off. He'd been a bit grumpy about it, but he'd complied after that and really put her through her paces.) As with Steve, once the rest of the boys saw that she was combat-ready, they had no complaints about her coming on board.

They were going to Germany this time, a small town just outside of Hamburg. One of Hydra's top scientists, Gerhart Sauer, lived there. His granddaughter, Damaris, was an anti-Hydra sympathizer. She had been for some time, and had originally contacted the S.S.R. a couple of years ago in the hopes that they could get her out in return for whatever information she could get at the time. They'd convinced her to stay on as an informant. Peggy was coming because the information they were getting was time-sensitive, and being well-versed in the information the S.S.R. already had, she'd be able to tell what was most important most quickly and where they'd need to get it to. She'd also been in communication with Damaris and was someone she trusted.

This was another mission that required a lot of walking. Germany, aside from being under Nazi control, was almost entirely under Grindelwald's control as well. Magical transportation, especially apparation, was allowed but carefully monitored. There would have been trackers and traces on them the moment they arrived in the country if they came in the normal way. And apparating into Denmark and hiking the length of the Schleswig-Holstein province was hardly practical. There was a small safe house, fifteen miles from the town they were headed for, that functioned as a gateway for every anti-Grindelwald rebel in a seventy-mile radius. Apparating in and out was out of the question, but the stone fireplace in the little cabin had been connected to a closed S.S.R.-operated Floo Network.

They made a less than graceful entrance into Germany, much to the amusement of the witch on guard. Most of the group had never traveled that way before, and though Jim and Dugan kept their feet when they came out the other side, someone had neglected to mention to them that they needed to keep moving and get out of the way. Steve had come next, and being as large as he was, had enough momentum to send all three of them to the ground, and then Bucky had landed on them, and then Jacques, and so on and so forth.

"We don't have to put that in the report, do we?" asked Gabe, dusting himself off as they made their way outside, followed by the laughter of the guard witch.

They set off on their hike. Peggy wasn't as nervous as she'd thought she'd be. This _was_ her first mission, after all, and they were in unfriendly territory. Still, though everyone was keeping eyes and ears open, it reminded her more of the walk down to Hogsmeade than it did anything dangerous. They talked softly among themselves, and not about the mission, as she would have expected.

"Steve's really loosened up since our first mission," Bucky said, coming up beside her.

"Oh?" she asked curiously.

Bucky smiled. "Oh, yeah. He was all, 'no talking, look alive, let's go over the mission fourteen times to make sure we know what we're doing'."

"I can hear you, you know," Steve said from several feet in front of them.

"I know," Bucky said, unconcerned. "You should've seen his face when Dugan suggested playing cards while we were sitting around in the bushes."

"We were working," Steve reminded him.

"We sat in those bushes for six hours," Bucky shot back.

Peggy smiled. "He does take things rather seriously, you know," she said.

Bucky smirked.

"Hey!" Steve complained.

"Ssh!" Dugan hissed from the front of the line. Bucky snorted and Peggy tried not to laugh.

They made pretty good time through the woods, stopping a couple of times to rest and get water or have lunch. Peggy was pleased she was keeping up, though she resolved to spend a bit more time working out once they got back. She'd been fit enough playing Quidditch, but she realized with chagrin that she'd been spending much more of her time this year behind a desk. She could already tell that her muscles were going to be aching by the end of the day.

About two miles out from town, they stopped when Gabe held up a hand. He'd been fiddling with the radio in the bag slung over his shoulder. (Howard had been true to his word to make one that was easier to carry by the time they came back from Break.) "Getting something," he said. They all paused as he stopped to listen. "Local station, can't tell if it's…Oh, oh, wait they mentioned Grindelwald, it's a wizard channel. Huh. There's a curfew tonight."

They all looked back at Peggy. "That's new," she told them. "The last reports mentioned nothing of the sort."

"Yeah," Gabe agreed, still listening in. "It was imposed last night. They caught some guy…Groessler, yesterday. Curfew's on until they catch the rest of his crew."

"He's part of the Black Dog Company," Peggy said. "Magical terrorists. The S.S.R. has them on a watch list. They're just as bad as Grindelwald as far as their ideas about non-magical people, but they find his style of government too oppressive, so they oppose him anyway. Lots of explosions and collateral damage."

"Should we be worried that they're out there?" Steve wondered. Running an op of their own while another one might be in the works was a risky idea.

Peggy shook her head. "We should keep an eye out, certainly, but I doubt it. They're very much an every-man-for-himself sort of group. If one of them got caught, the rest would have scarpered." She'd read enough reports on them to feel confident saying that.

"Okay." Steve nodded and turned back to Gabe. "When is curfew?"

"Eight o'clock."

"That doesn't give us a lot of time," Bucky pointed out. It was nearing five o'clock now.

"What sort of curfew is it?" Monty asked. "Magical, obviously, but…"

Gabe listened for a moment. "They're reminding everyone to be in by eight. I'm not sure what story the non-magical radio's putting out to enforce the curfew, but this one's just laying it all out. Dementors patrolling the streets, and…I can't translate that word, but some kind of alarm that detects movement outside of buildings. Goes until six tomorrow morning."

"They're not playing around," Dugan said with a low whistle.

"Jim, do you know the spell?" Steve asked.

"I think so," Jim replied. "But it's not one we can fiddle with. If we're not outside city limits or under a roof by eight, they'll find us."

Steve was quiet for a moment, considering. Peggy saw him look over at Bucky, some sort of silent conversation going on. "Okay," he said at last. "We're still going for it. We're just going to have to move faster than we thought." Damaris had given them a specific time to meet, which is why Peggy knew he wasn't putting it off until morning. "We're gonna have to split up. Gabe you have those little radios?"

"Yes, Sir," he replied. "I got four."

"Okay. Me, Bucky and Jim will stick with Peggy like we originally planned. Jacques, you and Monty work lookout like we decided."

"D'accord."

"Gabe, you and Dugan work on escape routes. Find us a couple of ways out, fastest, best-hidden, whatever you got. As a backup, find us some place with a roof we can wait out the night if we run out of time to make it out of the city by dark. Preferably somewhere close."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Dugan said.

"And stick together," Steve added. "You guys take one radio, Jacques and Monty take one, we'll take one, and Peggy can have one." Steve, Bucky and Jim were only going with her as far as they could—she was going to be in the house alone.

They split up as they reached the edge of the city, taking a moment to make sure any military-looking aspects of their clothing were covered before joining the evening crowds. Peggy was grateful for the arm Steve offered her—it made them look like a couple out for an evening walk, but it also kept her from tripping over the large 'country-farm-girl' skirt she was wearing over her clothes. She still had to walk slowly and use one hand to hold up the skirt so she didn't trip on the hem. It reminded her of the dresses her mum was always trying to get her to wear—long and voluminous and lady-like, and not very good for moving quickly in.

Bucky walked a few feet away from them, and she knew Jim was with him, though she couldn't see him. He was under an invisibility cloak—there weren't a lot of Japanese people in northern Germany. Dugan and Gabe had taken an alternate route to the address, scoping out possible hiding places. She had no idea where Jacques and Monty were, but she supposed the point of a good lookout was to see without being seen.

It was a nice enough little town—the sort of place that survived by being a central point for surrounding farmers to sell their wares. There were fruits and vegetables, cows and assorted poultry, people with milk, eggs, cheese and bread, all reminding Peggy a little of her own village as well as the fact that it should be dinner time right now. "Do we need to stop and get something for you to eat?" she asked Steve. He needed to eat more now that he was big, and stopping in the market for a snack would not look at all out of place.

"I'm good," he assured her. "I had a big lunch." She arched an eyebrow and he smiled. "And I'll eat something when we're done. Really, I'm okay. I can skip a meal without passing out."

They moved a little closer to Bucky and Jim as they left the main square. Trying to act casual, as if they belonged, they moved through the residential streets, stopping in front of a two-story house that looked a little better kept-up than its neighbors. They walked on past it, coming to an alley that led them down the side of the yard, and came out by the back garden.

"Okay," Jim said, tossing back the hood of the cloak so they could see him. "There don't seem to be any defensive spells on the place right now, but it is day time. There's an awful lot of burglar alarm sort of spells up around the house that activate when it gets dark. And a charm up on the door that, once it activates, you can't get in without being invited. So, Pegs, you're gonna want to get in before that."

"And, preferably, out before that too," Steve added.

"Right," she agreed. She consulted her watch. Ten minutes until she was supposed to go in. "Time to change." She moved over between the dumpster and the wooden fence, and couldn't help smiling a little as all three of them blushed and hastily turned away. She slipped out of the giant peasant skirt and stuffed it, along with her blouse and shawl, into the messenger bag Bucky had been carrying for her. She left on the trousers with the magic pockets she'd been wearing underneath the skirt in case she ended up needing the contents, though she did have to roll up the cuffs above her knees—the black service dress she slipped into was shorter than the skirt but far easier to move in. She smiled at the backs of the boys that were still resolutely looking away.

"You can turn around," she told them. "I'm decent now." She smiled again as they watched in seeming fascination at the way she twisted her hair up and pinned it in several sharp, quick motions. Reluctantly, she stepped out of the boots she'd been wearing and into a pair of plain heels that went with the dress. She tugged the hem down straight, and thought to herself that if she was going to be doing this sort of thing a lot on missions, she was going to have to convince Professor Phillips that she'd need some kind of disguise wardrobe. The only dress in the dorm that would pass as a maid's dress belonged to Donna, and she was a little bonier than Peggy. It fit, but it was tight in places that made it difficult to move her arms too much. She looked at the boys pensively. This ought to be interesting. "Could one of you zip me up?" She turned just enough to indicate the zipper on the back of the dress, and if she thought they were red before…

It was cute, really, even if they were pressed for time. Eventually, Bucky was nominated, on the grounds that he had a sister, so he should know how to do this sort of thing. When he pointed out that Jim had a sister too, Jim responded by pulling the invisibility cloak back over his head and, though she managed to stay quiet, Peggy laughed so hard she almost tore one of the seams in the tight part of the dress. "You boys are ridiculous. I've got to be at the door in ninety seconds, someone just come pull up the bloody zipper."

Moving like he was defusing a bomb, Bucky looked down long enough to make sure his hand was on the zipper and nothing else and pulled it up carefully, his eyes fixed on what was evidently a fascinating bit of brick on the wall.

"Thank you," she told him, resisting the urge to pat him on the cheek. "Alright, I'm going in."

"Right," Steve said, still looking rather red, but able to speak again now that the dress was zipped. He really was adorable. "You got your radio?"

She patted the normal-sized pocket on the front of the dress.

He looked at her like there was an awful lot he wanted to say, but he just smiled and nodded. "Be careful."

"You too," she replied. She turned and headed for the front of the house.

She could hear Jim muttering as she went, setting up little detection spells that would let them know if anyone was coming. Right now, the only people in the house should be Damaris and the servants. Sauer shouldn't be home for another hour. She straightened her skirt and knocked on the door. She'd been given instructions on how to introduce herself as the maid of a friend of Damaris's, and after looking her over, the butler nodded and let her in.

Peggy sat in the entry hall, impressed a bit in spite of herself. Evidently, being in Hydra paid well. It was a well-kept, but modest-looking place from the outside, but the furniture and carpeting ran towards luxurious. The butler reappeared, informing her that Miss Damaris would take the message in her room.

Ascending the stairs, Peggy walked slowly, taking a brief look into every room she passed—it was unlikely she'd see anything important just lying about, but it never hurt to check. She could see why Damaris had asked to get out—though it was rich and comfortable, there was something oppressive about the house, something dark. The light seemed weaker the higher up she went, the air thicker. The paintings on the wall stared back grimly. It was chilly, though she felt it more in her insides than on her skin. For the first time, she felt a shiver of apprehension, suddenly thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

She shook herself and kept walking. She knocked on the first door at the top and it swung open. A girl in her early twenties stood there, midway through dressing for dinner. Her hair and eyes were dark, and her smile was friendly. "Margariet?" she asked.

"Yes," Peggy nodded, and Damaris shuffled her quickly into the room.

"I am glad you have come," she told her. "My chambermaid, she is fiercely loyal to my grandparents. This is, I think, why she was given me. My old servant, Salome…" She made a _poof_ gesture. "Two years ago, she was suddenly gone."

"You think your grandfather suspects you?" Peggy asked.

Damaris inclined her head. "He has no confirmation. There is much discontent among the youth. So he watches." She moved to her bed and started unzipping the duvet cover. "My maid, she spies. She is careful, but I see how she moves my things. She hunts. All day, I have been in terror she would find these."

She pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Peggy. "The times," Damaris continued. "I saw the dates and thought, this is something that cannot wait for our regular communication."

Peggy flipped through the papers quickly. The dates were soon. Damaris had good instincts. "Do you have some spare parchment?" Peggy asked.

"Ja," Damaris replied, pulling some from her dresser.

Peggy laid one of the documents on the bed and set the blank piece beside it. "_Gemino_," she muttered, tapping it with her wand. Spidery writing flowed across the blank page, copying the contents of the first. She repeated the process with the rest of the papers. Phillips was going to be very pleased. The dates and times of a suspected meeting were now confirmed, as well as a location and a guest list. If the S.S.R. could be ready in time, some very key Hydra players could be apprehended.

"Thank you," she said, rolling up the documents and handing them back to Damaris. "Will anyone notice if I send out a message with a Patronus?"

Damaris looked at her watch. "Not yet. The night's spells begin at half-seven. I must return these." She darted out of the room.

Peggy conjured three little Patronuses. "Munich. Meatpacking district. Sixteen men, May 2nd, Viktor Armintz in attendance. More details to follow." She nodded, and the three fluffy silver martens bounded off into the air, headed for Phillips and his spies. She rolled up the copied plans—temporary, but they should last long enough to get back and be read in full—and hiked up her maid's dress, stuffing them down into the vast pockets of her trousers.

The radio buzzed in her pocket, and she raised one hand to click it twice—the signal for wait. She straightened her dress and made sure nothing looked out of place in the room. Before she could pull the radio out to reply, a doorbell that sounded more like a funeral chime rang through the air, and Damaris burst back into the room, panic on her face. "Grandfather is home early!" she hissed. "The plans are returned, but you must hide!"

"Can't I just leave?" Peggy asked, much more calmly than she felt. She was dressed as a maid, here on an innocent errand. Right?

Damaris was shaking her head. "No, no, he would question you." She took Peggy's shoulders, looking into her eyes. "Grandfather is a Legilimans. He would know."

Peggy's heart dropped into her stomach. "What about you? What if he questions you?"

A half-smile lifted the corner of Damaris's mouth. "I am an Occlumens. He sees what I would have him see. But you must hide!" She shuffled Peggy to the back of the room and into the closet, slamming the door shut as there was a knock at the front of the room.

Damaris crossed the room and began chastising her maid, demanding to know where she had been and complaining that she'd had to start dressing for dinner by herself. Peggy sat silently in the closet, not daring to move for fear the wood would creak. She guessed that the radio had been the boys trying to warn her that Sauer was on his way back. She hoped they would abide by her 'wait' signal and not try to call again while the maid was here.

Finally, the maid left. Damaris crossed to the closet once more, easing it open. "I am afraid you are stuck here for tonight," she said. "When Grandfather comes home, he is the one who puts up the spells. They are all in place now."

Peggy swallowed hard, but nodded. "Should I stay in here?"

"No," Damaris shook her head. "Amelie, she will return during dinner. To prepare my room for bed, so she says, but she will search."

"Where can I hide?"

Damaris bit her lip as if she was reluctant to say the next part. "I am afraid the safest place is Grandfather's study."

"What?!"

"Amelie, nor any of the other servants, will search there. Grandfather will work there after dinner, and he may work long into the night, but he will not think to look for you, because no one would be so foolish as to enter without his permission."

Peggy had a lot of doubts about this plan, but Damaris met her eyes sincerely. "Margariet, I have trusted you and your people these many years. You can trust me now."

The conviction in her eyes reminded Peggy of the way Steve looked when he really meant something, and she nodded. "Alright."

Damaris nodded and shuffled her quickly along the hall. "Quickly, quickly. In here." She ushered her into a largish room that actually reminded Peggy of her own grandfather's study. Damaris lifted a cloth from off of what Peggy thought was a table, but turned out to be a large trunk. "It will not be comfortable, I am afraid," Damaris told her. "But it is safe. And there." She pointed to the bottom corner in the back, where a hole the size of a pound coin let the light in. "So you can breathe."

Peggy smiled. "You're prepared."

Damaris smiled back. "I have hidden in this trunk myself. Now, I know your job is to get information, but I caution you, the desk, the closet, there are guarding spells. Do not try to disturb them. Listen all you will, but stay hidden here. In the morning, when the curfew is lifted but before the house has risen, I will come and let you out."

Peggy nodded, climbing into the trunk. "Thank you."

Damaris nodded again, closing the lid as Peggy sank down inside. She listened to Damaris's steps as she walked away and shut the door, gauging how well she could hear from in here. She shifted, getting as comfortable as she could. She could lay this way for a little while before needing to roll and move her legs, and she could reach the radio in her pocket. Damaris had said everyone was at dinner, so now would be her time to let the others know there would be a change in plans.

"Steve?" she asked quietly.

"Peggy!"

"Ssh!" she cautioned.

"Sorry," he whispered back. "Are you okay?"

"I'm safe," she replied. "But I'm stuck in the house for the night."

"What?!"

"There's not time to explain, I don't know how long it's safe to talk. I got the intel, and I've sent messages to Phillips. I'm safe, but I can't get out before curfew lifts in the morning. I'm not sure what time it is, but you boys need to go if you're going to get somewhere safe before it sets."

"Peggy, we can't leave you here."

"Steve, I'm safe. I promise. You get somewhere safe so I'm not worrying about you all night."

"Okay," he sighed, and she could hear the reluctance in his voice.

"And listen," she added. "Don't call me, alright? Promise you'll wait for me to call you."

"I will," he told her. "You be careful, okay?"

"You too."

The radio went silent and Peggy turned it off, a nauseating weight settling into her stomach. She was alone in a box in a Hydra scientist's study, and she'd just sent her backup away. If she got in trouble, no one was going to be there to help her. She pulled in several long, calming breaths. She was not going to throw up in here. And she wasn't going to die in here. She was going to stay here until sunrise, and no one was going to find her, and she would make it out. She had this. She totally had this.

She shifted again, reaching down awkwardly to pry the shoes off her feet. Removing the heels gave her a little more room to stretch her legs, and there was just space enough to set them by her side. The worst of sitting alone in the dark was that there was no way of marking the time. She was actually starting to get quite bored when heavy footfalls on the carpet outside reminded her why she was supposed to be scared in the first place.

Someone, presumably Sauer, came into the room. Peggy held her breath as the footsteps passed her trunk, letting it out in a low sigh of relief when they continued on by. A body sank into a wooden chair that creaked under its weight, and she guessed he was sitting at the desk by the window. For a long time, all she heard was the rustle of paper, sometimes broken up by the scratch of a quill, and the occasional cough or clearing of a throat. Was he winding down the day by reading the newspaper? Or was it something more sinister—Hydra orders and reports?

Though it was just as silent as before, Peggy was far from bored. Every muscle was tense, her ears were straining, listening for signs of movement, her fingers clenched around her wand.

The funereal doorbell rang again, and she couldn't stop herself from gasping at the unexpected noise. She clamped her hand over her mouth in horror, not daring to breathe, and for a moment, as Sauer's heavy feet walked by again, she was certain this was the moment she was going to die. The fear was so overwhelming, it took her a moment to realize that he had walked past the trunk and to the door, and now he was shouting to the butler, demanding to know who it was at this hour. Then she heard him move away down the stairs.

Once she could breathe again, Peggy started to wonder who it was too. She had no idea of the time, but it had been close enough to curfew when she'd gone into the trunk that no one should be out on the streets by now. Unless…Whoever set the curfew would have to have means of moving about after hours. At the very least that meant one of the city officials in Grindelwald's pocket, and, considering whose house she was in, quite possibly someone affiliated with Hydra. Her night was about to get a lot more interesting. And dangerous.

Voices followed the feet back up the stairs and into the study. Sauer and the mysterious guests—it sounded like there were two of them. She recognized neither voice—they were both high and rather nasal, and it struck a familiar chord, but they were muffled through the wooden walls of the trunk. A voice she did recognize as Sauer's (from all the shouting earlier) addressed one of the others as 'Arnim', and when the pieces clicked into place a few seconds later in her brain, she only just managed to stop another horrified gasp. 'Arnim' couldn't be anyone but Arnim Zola—Hydra's top scientist and the man who had tortured Bucky.

The other man was never addressed by name—introductions must have taken place down in the foyer—but Peggy listened intently for any clue to his identity. His German was poor enough that the conversation was taking place in French—something the three of them all seemed to know. (Lucky for Peggy, too, because her German was still barely conversational.) Sauer and Zola both had a German touch to their consonants, and Peggy couldn't stop her mouth opening in surprise when she realized the third man, though his French was flawless, was unmistakably English. The idea that there was an English Hydra agent in the same room as her that she had no way of identifying made her want to scream.

They first made small talk about the weather and their journey. (She was right, they'd been given exceptions to the alarm spells and had used Patronuses to ward off Dementors. She wondered briefly what sort of thing counted as a happy memory for someone like a Hydra agent before pulling her attention back to the conversation at hand.) She then heard the sounds of parchment being unrolled.

"As you can see, Gerhart," began Zola's voice in sharp French. He and Sauer must know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis. "We have come to a wall. The healing aspect of the potion is well-tested, and works on its own. Numerous subjects have allowed us to perfect it."

Including Bucky, thought Peggy with a snarl.

"The endurance potion, meanwhile, we have been testing on the prisoners in our Warsaw factory."

Peggy perked up. Warsaw, was it? The S.S.R. knew there was a factory in Poland, and now they knew where it was.

"They can work longer before giving out, and on a consistent basis. Each potion functions as it should alone. The problem comes when we combine them."

"Yes," agreed the Englishman. "Doctor Zola has been trying various combinations for some time. Initially, the combination slowed the healing part down until it was nearly pointless. Making adjustments caused it to swing too far the other way. Everything we try reduces the efficiency of some portion of it, and this is with only two components."

"Mm," Sauer mused. Silence for a moment. "Where are the most recent results?"

"Here," Zola said, and Peggy heard the rustling of the parchment. Another moment of silence, no doubt as Sauer read over them, then he launched into a series of suggestions too technical for Peggy to follow. She listened intently, however, knowing that her memories could be copied and studied by someone who actually knew about potions.

The conversation went on in the same vein for some time. Zola and the unknown Englishman made suggestions or asked questions, but Sauer did most of the talking. Peggy thought she could hear the scratching of a quill—one of them was taking notes.

When the business side of the conversation was done, they a sat little longer and chatted, and out of everything in this frightening, disturbing night, this was what Peggy found to be the most horrifying portion of the evening. They were sharing stories from their work, anecdotes they found amusing—but their work was human experimentation, and the things they found amusing made Peggy want to vomit. She knew this was probably important information, but she found herself trying to block out as much as she could—she couldn't bear the way they laughed as they described people screaming and begging for mercy, or the intricate, gory details of the procedures they performed. And she knew that they had done this to hundreds, maybe thousands of people, but she only knew the name and the face of one of them, and her brain wouldn't stop painting Bucky into the middle of their gruesome word pictures.

She was crying silently by the time they were done. Footsteps receded, the door shut and the light filtering through the airhole vanished. The room was dark, and everyone was gone. Still she cried quietly, afraid that if she made any noise she would start sobbing, loudly, and not be able to stop. She knew Hydra was awful, she knew it, but the nonchalant tone these men used to discuss their atrocities was just…depraved. Though their casual cruelty made her blood boil until it was roaring in her ears, she found herself wanting nothing more than to be out of this cramped box and this evil house and to have Steve's arms locked around her, warm and safe and shielding her from the horrors of the world. She wanted to see Bucky and make sure he was alive and whole. She wanted to be at home, in her bed, and Kelly was right, she was mad to have come here…

No. No. It was awful, and it was terrifying, and it was soul-wrenching, but _that_ was why she was here. Because until someone stopped them, they were going to keep doing it. And if her being here meant they would be stopped that much sooner, then she could take it. She could take the fear and the revulsion and the nightmares that were sure to follow. She. Could do. This.

The quietness of the night dragged on, and Peggy started to get cold. A pang in her stomach reminded her it had been a long time since she'd eaten. She hoped Steve and the others had gotten something to eat after they'd found a safe place. (She knew they must have found a safe place—no wailing cries of alarm spells had split the night.) Shifting a little, she pulled up the hem of the dress until she could reach the pocket of her trousers. After some digging, she pulled out a dinner-roll, a little flattened, but perfectly edible. The bread satisfied the hunger enough that she decided not to try digging for any of the other food—she'd visited the elves in the kitchen to stock up before leaving—no one was in here, but she still didn't want to move around too much.

She drifted as the night wore on, never allowing herself to fall completely asleep. The door slowly creaked open and she stiffened, hand tight on her wand. Footsteps paused outside the trunk.

"Margariet?" came Damaris's soft voice. "It's me." The lid of the trunk creaked open, and Damaris reached a hand in to help Peggy out.

She came out stiffly, muscles sore and aching and reluctant to move. She leaned against Damaris as she tested her protesting limbs, straightening when she was sure none of them would buckle unexpectedly. "Thank you," she whispered.

Damaris nodded. "I am so sorry. Grandfather returning early, and then the guests…" She shook her head. "It cannot have been an easy night."

"No," Peggy agreed. "Damaris, listen. Do you know who the men were who came to see your grandfather?" The identity of the unknown Englishman had been plaguing her all night. It irritated her even further that not once had he spoken English—the French accent had masked whatever his voice usually sounded like, and though it might have been a foolish hope, Peggy couldn't help thinking she—or someone who would see her memories—might be able to recognize his voice if he'd just spoken normally. It was likely she didn't know him, but she'd been trying to work it out all night to no avail.

"No." Damaris shook her head again. "They came late enough, I was expected to be in my room. And I did not know their voices. I am never permitted to meet Grandfather's coworkers." She leaned over and grabbed Peggy's shoes out of the trunk, setting them on the floor and closing the lid quietly before slipping the cloth back over the top. "But we must go. The spells, they lift in the morning for the milkman, just after the curfew. We have a very small window between his delivery and the servants arriving in the kitchen. Come."

Peggy pulled the radio out of her pocket, and Damaris nodded. She switched it back on, keeping the volume low. "Steve?"

"Peggy?" came the reply, instantly, and, thankfully, quietly.

"Steve, I'm on my way out. I'm headed for the alley where we started."

"Okay. We'll see you there."

"Right. Got to go." She clicked it off again and put it away.

Peggy picked up the shoes, treading silently in her bare feet along behind Damaris as they slipped downstairs. The kitchen was still dark when they stepped inside. "Wait," Damaris cautioned as Peggy headed for the back door. Damaris pulled the curtain open a fraction, peering down. A few seconds later, Peggy heard the soft clink of glass on stone, then whistling as the milkman made his way down the road. "Now." Damaris pulled the door open and peeked outside. "It is safe." To Peggy's surprise, she grabbed her and hugged her tightly. "Be safe, Maragriet. You are very brave. I hope to see you again when this war is over."

Peggy hugged her back. She hated to leave her here in this awful house. "Be careful," she whispered. She stepped over the milk bottles on the porch and down the stone steps. The stone of the steps and the cobblestones of the road were freezing on her bare feet, but she didn't stop to put her shoes on—they would only slow her down, and the heels would make far too much noise in the early morning stillness.

She rounded the corner into the alley, and there were Steve and Bucky and Jim, damp and muddy and looking as though they'd spent a very rough night, but she grinned widely because they were the best thing she'd ever seen.

* * *

The worried weight that had been sitting on Steve's chest all night and keeping him from breathing lifted as Peggy rounded the corner. She was walking a little stiffly, carrying her shoes instead of wearing them, but she didn't look hurt. She beamed when she saw them.

She hugged Jim, who was closest to her, then Bucky, and her arms lingered around his shoulders for a moment, something sad in her face when she pulled away. Then she flung herself into Steve's arms and he hugged her tightly, feeling something kind of desperate in the way her hands clenched in the back of his shirt. "Are you okay?" he asked her.

"Kiss me," she replied.

"What?" He hadn't expected that as a response. He was also acutely aware of the fact that Jim and Bucky were right there.

"After the things I heard last night, the world feels like an awful place. Kiss me and remind me there's some good in it." Forgetting Jim and Bucky and what they might think, Steve tightened his embrace around her, picking her up off the ground and kissing her gently.

"Did that help?" he asked a little uncertainly, setting her back on her feet.

She nodded, and she seemed a little steadier now. "Thank you."

"Are you okay?" he asked again, worrying now that she was fine about whatever had shaken her up in the first place.

"I am," she said.

"You're freezing. Here," he told her, shucking his leather jacket and wrapping it over her shoulders, which she accepted without protest.

"I've got your stuff," Bucky said, returning from where he and Jim had discreetly moved away to when the kissing started. He opened up the messenger bag and handed her her boots and the peasant skirt from yesterday, which she slipped on over her dress. Steve knew she wasn't a fan of the big skirt, but she wasn't shivering anymore.

"Thanks," she told him. "What happened to you three?"

"Spent the night in a shed with a leaking roof," Jim replied, oddly chipper considering how much he'd been complaining about it last night. "Good times."

Peggy smiled, and they started walking away now that she had her shoes back on. "Well, I'll gladly trade you your leaking roof for a trunk in a Hydra scientist's study."

Steve arched an eyebrow. "You spent the night in a trunk?"

Her smile widened. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

Still feeling the need to speak in hushed tones as they made their way through the sleepy streets, Steve, Bucky and Jim took turns filling her in on their night. Once she'd told them to go, they'd tried to meet up with Gabe, Dugan, Monty and Jacques. Their radios had been off though, and with curfew closing in, there wasn't time to look for them. (It was nearly an hour later that they were able to get a hold of them and found out they'd run across a security patrol and had to hide.) They'd finally run a couple of streets over until they found a house with a large yard and an unlocked gate. There was a modest-sized shed which Jim assured them would count as protection against the alarm spell, as long as they stayed inside it. The shed had been muddy and smelled faintly of birds, and, as they discovered once it started raining, the roof leaked. They couldn't light any sort of fire to keep warm because of their proximity to the house, and all the food and other supplies had been in Dugan and Gabe's backpacks. So they'd quietly and carefully cleared the gardening supplies out of the middle, found the least damp patch they could, and sat down and huddled around Steve in an attempt to stay warm.

"It's that new metabolism," Bucky clarified, in response to Peggy's curious eyebrow. "He's like a furnace. A furnace in a patriotic jumpsuit." He said this last with a smile, making the three of them chuckle while Steve glared. Apparently, after that mission with the 107th and the 89th, when they'd rescued all those prisoners, none of the prisoners had caught Steve's name, but they'd heard the other boys calling him 'Captain'. In interviews with the Daily Prophet—which Steve had been blissfully unaware of until he got back to school—people seemed to have started referring to him as 'Captain America'. The majority of the prisoners they'd rescued had been British, so it would seem his accent had stood out when he went around talking to them, and between that and the red and white stripes and the star that he still wasn't sure what Howard's logic in putting on his uniform had been, they seemed to have really glommed on to the fact that he was American. (Howard had also, after Steve's new title became a thing, painted a couple of bands of red, white and blue, along with a white star, onto Steve's vibranium shield. He said it completed the theme, and, as if he'd sensed Bucky's argument that he'd essentially put a big target on Steve's back, he pointed out that the paint actually dulled down the original shiny silver sheen and made it _less_ attention-drawing.)

"You're gonna have to embrace it, Stevie," Bucky said, knowing that Steve was glaring even though it was aimed at the back of his head. "It's not even Dugan that came up with this one. It's the newspaper. It's not going away. May as well enjoy it."

Steve sighed. There were worse things, he supposed. "You guys aren't gonna start calling me that, are you?" He wasn't able to keep just a little bit of a whine out of his voice.

The three of them shared a conspiratorial glance, but then Bucky smiled and shook his head. "Nah. Don't worry about it."

"It _does_ sound a bit dashing, though," Peggy pointed out, slipping her arm into his as they walked. He did smile a little bit at that.

"Alright, Pegs, your turn," Jim said. "Why were you in a trunk all night?"

She shared her story with them, and by the end of it, Steve was struck anew by how incredibly brave she was. Hours in a cramped little box, four feet away from certain, painful death if anyone had known she was there. No wonder she'd been shook up.

"Zola was there?" Bucky asked, after she'd finished. He'd been very quiet after she mentioned his name.

She nodded. "Yeah, he…I'm sorry." She didn't seem to know what else to say.

Steve looked worriedly over at Bucky, but he shook his head. "No, it—it's not your fault," he said, seeming a little surprised by her apology. "It's not like I think you should've jumped out of the trunk and taken him out or anything."

"The thought _did_ cross my mind once or twice," she admitted.

"I'm glad you didn't," he told her. Steve nodded. It would have been suicide. Bucky smiled a little then. "But I appreciate the thought."

Peggy smiled back and Bucky seemed alright, although Steve made a note to check on him a little later. "You don't have any idea who the other guy was?" he asked, steering the conversation to safer waters.

"No," she replied, and she seemed really annoyed about it. "I could tell he was English, but—"

"How?" Jim interrupted.

"Learning French is supposed to be a sign of good class in proper English social circles. I know what English people speaking French sound like. There was an English Hydra agent four feet away from me for three hours, and if I could've just…" She growled. "All I had to do was lift the lid."

"That would've gotten you killed," Steve said.

"I know!" she snapped. "That's why I didn't do it. Just the idea that someone who _should_ be on our side is over here helping _them_, doing…" She swallowed hard. "The kinds of things they were talking about last night…" She shook her head and said nothing more. After a moment, Steve slid an arm over her shoulders, and instead of shoving it off, she leaned her head in a little. It was Hydra she was mad at. Not him.

There were more people out on the street now, and they moved a little faster as the town came awake, meeting up with Gabe and the others before too long. They also did not appear to have had an easy night—they'd been dry, but they'd been in a stable, and they smelled like it. They were very apologetic about getting cornered and not having a place ready for the rest of them, but it was alright. They hadn't spent the night together as a team like they'd intended to, but they'd all survived the night and had escaped detection, and that was the important part.

Before long, they were out of town, and they were much quieter walking out than walking in. Steve figured they were just all tired—the stable crew hadn't gotten any sleep either. For his part, his head was really starting to pound, and he wasn't sure when he first noticed, but his hands were starting to shake a little. He couldn't be _that_ tired, could he? He'd missed nights of sleep on missions before.

"Steve?" He blinked, surprised to see Bucky in front of him. Bucky was looking a little concerned, and Steve realized Bucky had said his name a couple of times.

"Yeah?"

"Listen, I think you should call a break. Everyone's exhausted. We've got fourteen more miles to go, and we're not getting there before dark at this pace. We may as well take a break and get there a little later after dark."

"Oh, yeah. Okay." That was a good idea. He probably should have thought of that. "Guys, let's take a break," he said a little more loudly.

Happily, everyone sank down to sit on rocks or stumps or patches of moss. "What's up?" Bucky asked, crouching next to him.

"I'm fine."

"Steve."

Steve grimaced and rubbed the side of his head. "My head's really starting to hurt. I think I'm just tired."

Bucky didn't look entirely convinced. "I think you need to eat. That super-metabolism's probably not too happy about missing dinner _and_ breakfast."

Steve considered that as much as his aching head would allow. "You're probably right."

One side of Bucky's mouth quirked up in a smile. "I'm always right. You stay here, I'll get something started."

"Breakfast?" Jim asked hopefully, catching the end of the conversation.

"Yep," Bucky replied. "Dugan, you wanna set up some security? Gabe, I think it's your turn to cook."

Monty went off to help Dugan secure the area, and Jim and Bucky got wood for a fire while Gabe and Jacques unpacked the backpacks. Peggy vanished into the bushes for a few minutes, coming back in the clothes she'd hiked in yesterday instead of the dress/skirt combo. "Much better," she sighed, sitting down next to Steve. She picked up one of his hands in both of hers, giving him a disapproving look after feeling the tremors there. "What was that about being fine missing a meal?"

He chuckled. "I didn't pass out, did I? And technically," he pointed out. "I _was_ fine missing one. It's just now I've missed two."

"Mm. Well, let's not do that again, shall we?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Good answer."

"How did you not pack salt?" Jim complained from over by the fire.

"I did pack salt," Gabe retorted. "It's just empty."

"Empty saltshaker's not super helpful," Bucky pointed out.

Peggy chuckled. "Kelly was right."

"What?" Steve asked.

"Never mind. Let me go sort this." She stood, moving towards the cooking fire. "I've got salt."

A few minutes later, plates were being passed around. Steve's contained a stack of toast, roasted potatoes with bits of sausage and onion in it, and a hunk of cheese. A battered tin cup of tea was passed over as well.

"I say from here on out, any time we have to camp, we should bring Peggy," Jim declared.

Steve looked up curiously. "Because she brought salt?"

"Salt?" Gabe asked. "Were you not paying attention? She brought salt, she brought garlic and onions—that's why the potatoes are so amazing, by the way—she brought cheese, she brought more bread, she brought freaking strawberry jelly!" he finished, gesturing to the jar being passed around.

"I brought extra forks too," Peggy pointed out around a mouthful of toast. "Have you lot really been sharing three forks since February?"

"Less washing up to do at the end," Monty said. Peggy shook her head.

"You brought jelly?" Steve asked, picking up the jar.

"Always prepared," she told him.

"Where did you put it?"

She smiled serenely and kept eating.

By the fourth piece of toast, Steve's headache was clearing up. It was gone completely by the time he was done. Okay, so, while he could certainly survive missing two meals, in the future it would best to avoid that on missions. That pounding head and shaking hands sure wouldn't be any good in a fight.

For all that Dugan liked to joke around, he took his job as security officer for the team seriously. He offered to take watch for a while so the rest of them could get some much-needed rest. Steve told him to wake him in a couple of hours and switch out. He found a comfortable patch of moss next to where Bucky was punching his messenger bag into a shape serviceable for a pillow.

"Hey, Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for setting up the whole rest thing. I should've thought of that, but I couldn't really think past the headache."

Bucky smiled. "That's my job, Stevie. Gotta keep the rest of you yahoos together."

"Thanks," Steve said again. "Hey, are you okay? With the whole…the Zola thing?"

Bucky's smile fell, but he nodded. "Yeah. I wish I'd known he was gonna be there. But I don't know what I would've done if I had known. Like I told Peggy, it's not like she could've jumped out and gotten him—not without getting herself killed anyway. And it's not like we could've gone in after him. Just knowing he was so close…" He growled.

"We'll get him one day, Buck," Steve assured him. He wasn't sure when, but after everything the scientist had done, there was no way he was walking away from this war. Bucky got first dibs, sure, but Steve claimed the next spot in line.

"Yeah, we will," Bucky agreed. He smiled over at Steve and laid his head down on his make-shift pillow. "I'm okay, Steve." And he sounded like he was.

Dugan woke him up a couple of hours later, and Steve watched over the rest of his team while they slept. Peggy woke up before everyone else, and she sat with him and they talked a while. He asked her more about her night in Sauer's house—she'd already told them about it earlier, but it sounded like there was a lot she needed to unpack, and Steve knew how much it helped to have someone who just listened. She told him more about Damaris and how scared she was, and more about the things Peggy had heard while she laid in the trunk. As she talked about the way they'd laughed about how they treated their prisoners, Steve suddenly understood the sadness he'd caught in her eyes when she'd hugged Bucky earlier. He didn't really know what to say to make it better, so he just slid his arm over her shoulders, and she leaned in and rested her head against him.

It was around noon when they got moving again. Not wanting to lose any more time, they decided to eat lunch while they walked—Gabe passed around the rest of the bread, and Peggy made sure they all got a piece of fruit that she produced from…somewhere.

The rest and the food had done them all good, and they were making better time than Steve had thought they would. He figured they could hit the safehouse around sunset.

The walk was largely uneventful until they were about two miles out. Dugan had been scouting up ahead and shouted a warning back to them. He'd run into another scout coming from the other direction, a wizard with Grindelwald's gold triangle with a circle and a line through it embroidered on his pocket. They could hear shouting coming from the other way as that scout warned whatever group he was with.

"Let's go!" Steve yelled, motioning them all forward. Better to hit them before they had time to mount an assault.

They ran forward, living up to their nickname as they whooped and howled and crashed through the trees. The area was tight, hemmed in by trees and bushes, and it was hard to keep track of where everyone was. Steve figured his best bet was to go with power over finesse and get it done quickly—and in close quarters like this, that meant his fists and his feet and his shield. He couldn't throw the shield without risking hitting someone on his team, but he could sure punch with it. It seemed to surprise his opponents too, who didn't seem prepared for a non-magical attack.

He jumped to avoid a spell flying at his feet, and in a split-second decision in the air, he rolled his body up and around and used the momentum to hit a soldier coming up behind him with the full force of his weight, sending him to the ground and pulling a fist around to meet his head and make sure he stayed there.

Unsurrounded for the moment, Steve spun around and saw Peggy several feet away, trapped in the arms of a soldier who'd grabbed her from behind. He ran to help, but there was no need—Peggy sent one elbow flying up into her attacker's nose, simultaneously swinging her boot back into his kneecap and breaking it with an audible crack. She jerked herself forward as soon as his grip on her loosened and swung around, her fist meeting his broken nose and her foot connecting with his gut a second later. He was on the ground before Steve got there.

She looked up, swiping a hand across her bleeding lip, and smiled. Steve couldn't help grinning back. She was good.

The fight was over, and the Howling Commandos emerged victorious, if a little battered.

"Everybody good to move?" Steve asked. They appeared to have taken out the whole squad, but they didn't know how many of them there had been to start with. If any of them had gotten away, there could be more of them on their tail before too long.

Everyone replied in the affirmative—nothing they couldn't walk off. They quickly gathered up the gear they'd dropped before the fight. "What are you doing?" Monty asked Peggy, who, instead of going back for her stuff, was rifling through the downed soldiers' pockets.

"Looking for intel," she replied. "Orders or anything like that." She flipped through a couple of pieces of paper she'd pulled out, evidently deciding two of them were worth keeping and stuffing them in her pocket. She accepted her bag back from Jacques, who'd picked it up along with his own. "Thanks."

"Find any money while you were digging in there?" Jim asked, tightening the straps of his medical bag. That got a laugh and they all started moving again, picking up the pace. Who know how many more of them were out there?

They made it to the safehouse just as the last rays of light were disappearing behind the mountains. The witch who'd been on duty the day before had been replaced by a stern-looking wizard. They let him know about the soldiers they'd run into, and he nodded briskly and produced a jar of the shiny powder they'd need to activate the fire. A few minutes later, they were dusting themselves off on the floor of Professor Phillips' office—they hadn't run into each other this time, and Steve had remembered to duck—Phillips' fireplace had a low mantel.

Phillips gave them an hour to get dinner and get cleaned up before coming back to give their report. Peggy stayed behind while they hurried out, pulling the copied documents from her pocket and letting Phillips know she had some memories he should copy before she went anywhere.

"Trying out some new close-combat moves?" Bucky asked him as they headed for the dorm. He smiled when Steve raised a questioning eyebrow. "I saw you throw yourself at that last guy."

Steve smiled. "That move does work a lot better now that I'm this size, doesn't it?" He remembered having tried something similar back when he was tiny, hoping that if he'd used his entire body, maybe he'd get enough momentum to make his opponent move. It had never worked.

Bucky laughed. "Yeah, it sure does."

* * *

_So, Peggy's come away with some good intel, and maybe a little more than she went in to find. We'll have to see how the conversation she overheard plays out. Hope you're enjoying the story (I'd love to hear what you're thinking!), and I'll see you on Monday!_


	46. The Nuckelavee

_New mission time! The Howlies face off against an opponent that's kind of different than what they're used to.  
_

* * *

"Afternoon, gentlemen," Peggy greeted. It was Wednesday afternoon—though the missions the Howling Commandos went on varied by what was happening and when, Phillips still liked to try to send them out on the weekends whenever possible. They didn't go out every week, but they'd fallen into the routine of meeting with Peggy, or Phillips, or both, on Wednesdays after school—time enough to prep for the weekend if they _were_ going anywhere, and time to look over intel and toss ideas around if they weren't.

"Hey, Peggy," Bucky replied, dropping into his usual seat. He looked at the folder in her hands, thick with papers. "That looks like a mission."

She smiled. "Very astute, Mr. Barnes. If you lot are quite ready," she said, shooting a stern glare over at Gabe and Jacques who were chatting in French and laughing. "We'll get started." She opened up her folder and started laying things out on the table. "You're staying in Scotland this time. This is Drumnadrochit," she said, tapping on a map that unfolded to take up half the table. Steve leaned in, and Bucky could see his eyes raking over the parchment, taking in woods, rivers and lakes, roads and the proximity of other towns. "They're mostly farming and fishing, and they do a fair bit of tourism in the Loch Ness Monster line, though that's slowed down a lot since the war started."

Jim and Gabe looked at each other excitedly. "Is the Loch Ness Monster real?" Gabe asked.

"I don't know," Peggy said. "It—"

"If it is, it's probably just a water horse," Monty put in. He knew a fair bit about magical creatures, though that didn't come up much on missions. "There's a lot of those in Scotland."

"Eh bien, oui," Jacques said. "Mais les chevaux d'eau sont toujours dangereux. Donc, ce serait toujours un monstre."

"Yes, they are dangerous, but you're not—" Peggy started.

"That's so cool!" Jim enthused. "Are we gonna get to see the Loch Ness Monster? Ooh! Is Hydra trying to do something with it? Do we have to save it from Hydra?"

"What would Hydra want with a water horse?" Dugan scoffed.

"Who knows why Hydra wants anything?" Jim replied, waving a hand dismissively. "They're crazy. You could tell me they wanted to take control of all the pineapple farms in Hawaii and it wouldn't surprise me."

"I would find that somewhat surprising," Monty said.

"Guys," Steve said sternly, and they quieted down. Bucky chuckled to himself.

"Thank you," Peggy said, nodding at Steve. "As I was saying," she started again, with a pointed look at Jim. "No, you're not doing anything with the Loch Ness Monster. I shouldn't've even brought it up. You're going to Drumnadrochit to find out why all their crops are dying."

That earned her a puzzled look from everyone. "What?" several of them asked.

She smiled, evidently pleased to have thrown them a curveball. "The crops are dying," she repeated. "We're just a few weeks into May—it's too early for what could be written off as a summer drought. Also, a lot of the fish are dying."

"And, we think this has something to do with Hydra?" Jim asked, skeptical, but trying to sound polite.

Peggy nodded, laying out some photographs on the table. Dead fish floated at the top of the lake, and the dried-up husks of crops protruded forlornly out of dead earth. "This happened overnight," she said.

They all leaned in closer at that. Bucky had been on a farm exactly once in his life, but he knew plants didn't work that way. "That's not normal. Did this Drumnado place do something to piss off Hydra?"

"Drumnadrochit," Peggy corrected. "And no, not that we know of. There is a small Hydra cell that's popped up recently in Inverness about fifteen miles to the north," she said, sliding her finger up the map to a larger town. "We're having trouble pinning them down. But they're very much in the minority. It's not like people are resisting them and being punished for it, like over on the continent. But the thing about Inverness…" She reached back for her folder and pulled out some more photos, more dead crops and animals. "This," she said, gesturing to encompass the photos. "Has been moving out in a line from Inverness for the past three days. Drumnadrochit is the farthest it's gotten, which is why we're sending you there. We think…" She shot an uncomfortable glance at Steve. "We think they're using the cell in Inverness to experiment. We know they like to run tests of their larger destructive spells on the general population."

Bucky suddenly understood her glance at Steve. That Hydra testing thing—that was what had killed his ma. That strain of tuberculosis was still one that they used, inflicting it on people and sometimes even whole towns that made them angry. The S.S.R. _had_ worked out a cure for it now, but because it worked so quickly, it still caused a lot of damage before it could be stopped.

Steve was very still, but he nodded. "That does sound like something that needs checking out."

"We don't think this one can wait for the weekend," Peggy said, pressing on. "Phillips wants you to go tonight if you think you can manage, or tomorrow at the latest."

"We can do it tonight," Steve said. Then he seemed to remember that he wasn't the only one going. "Right, guys?" he asked, looking around the table.

They all looked at each other and nodded. There wasn't a lot of planning to be done for this one—it's not like they needed a plan of attack or anything. It was recon. Go out, look around, find out stuff. Pretty straightforward.

"We can do tonight," Bucky said.

"Give us a few hours to pack, but sure," Gabe said. "No reason not to."

"The sooner the better," Monty agreed.

"Yeah, and, we've got that Potions paper due tomorrow and I haven't even started," Dugan said. He grinned. "I could use the extension."

Peggy smiled. "Good. Now, remember, this is mostly reconnaissance. If you find out who's doing it, and _if_ they can be stopped with minimal risk," she said, looking sternly at Steve. "Then yes, go ahead and stop them. But information is really what we're after here. We need to know who it is, but once we know that, that's easy enough to sort. What we really need is what they're doing and how—we can't stop it and we can't reverse it if we don't know how it works."

They got down to the business of planning then, looking up likely locations on the map, and pondering what sorts of spells they might run into and what they might need. Peggy gave them all the intel they had on the Hydra agents in Inverness, so that, if it looked like things tied back to them, they could investigate that way. They broke up to pack, change, and eat an early dinner, then they hiked down to the front gates and apparated away.

They arrived on the outskirts of Drumnadrochit, and it didn't take them long to find the damaged farmland. Bucky let out a low whistle as they stood on the edge of it, surveying the damage. The oat stalks were blackened, dried out husks of what they should have been. Gabe cautiously poked one with a stick and it crumbled to ash. The ground around the plants was hard, dry, cracked and burned as if a fire had raged over it, but it stopped very abruptly, the grass crisp and green and thick on the other side, as if an invisible line had been drawn. The oats on that side of the line seemed unharmed. "What the hell?" he wondered.

"Oh, man," Jim said. "You guys feel that?" He gestured at the air around them when they looked puzzled. "Definitely something magic going on here. It's like a wall, right here." He stuck his hand into the burned-out area to demonstrate.

Cautiously, Bucky did the same. The air inside the damaged area tingled with energy—faint, but definitely noticeable.

"Do you know of any spells that could have done this?" Steve asked.

Jim shrugged. "No idea. But, we just got here. Let me check it out. Dugan!" he nodded toward an area he seemed to find more interesting, and the two of them got out wands and something that looked like a compass and started testing things.

Since Dugan had the hex side of things covered while Jim looked into other kinds of spells, Steve, Gabe, Bucky and Jacques spread out into the surrounding farmland, looking for any clues that might indicate people had been there or spells had been cast. "Hey, where's Monty?" Gabe asked after a minute.

They all looked up, and Bucky spotted him first. He was pacing around the edge of the burned-out area, frowning thoughtfully at the dirt and occasionally stepping into and back out of it pensively. "Hey, Monty! Whatcha doing?" Bucky called. Monty waved a distracted hand instead of answering.

They continued their search, coming up empty. It was starting to get dark, too, and they didn't want to wander too far away. "Anything?" Steve asked Jim and Dugan, who had moved to a different patch of dirt.

They looked up. "There's definitely something hinky going on here," Dugan said, standing up and scratching at the back of his head. "It's magic, but it's…different."

"Different how?" Gabe asked.

Jim shrugged. "There's nothing specific. Like, it's not a specific curse or hex or anything that did this. It's some kind of magic—some kind of dark magic—but it's not like spells were being cast here or anything."

"It's like whatever this energy was coming from was just…existing here," Dugan finished.

They all thought over that for a while. "That can't be good," Steve said at last. "How powerful of a wizard do you have to be to kill things by just standing by them?"

"If it is a wizard," Bucky added. He looked around. "If it's a person, they would have had to have been running around to kill an area this big. And Peggy said it goes all the way to Inverness."

Steve nodded. "Although it has taken three nights to get this far. So, if it is a person, they didn't run all the way out here all at once. Could it be some kind of machine? I know you said it's not a curse, but what about a…a potion or something? Like those little curse bombs that Monty has."

Jim and Dugan looked at each other and shrugged. "Could be. Potions act differently than curses. If it's something misting out and killing everything, then evaporating, we wouldn't necessarily be able to tell what exactly it was."

"If it was a machine, wouldn't there be tracks or something?" Gabe asked. He looked around the blackened ground in the fading light. "Cause Sarge is right, it's a wide area, and if it's spraying some kind of potion out, it'd have to be pretty big to spread this far. Wouldn't we see tire tracks or something?"

"Pas si ça volait," Jacques said thoughtfully.

"Now there's a thought," Steve said. "Something that flew wouldn't leave tracks, and it would be easier to move around."

"I'm still stuck on _why_," Bucky said. He couldn't see much of the farmland anymore, but he could hear the wind rustling through the undamaged stalks of oats. "Why come all this way and stop in the middle of a field? If you're gonna destroy someone's crops, why not destroy them all?"

"And we haven't even looked at the lake yet," Steve added. That was a whole other thing to consider—how were the oats and the fish connected?

"I'd bet good money this burned out path goes back by the lake," Monty said. "Right along the edge of it, but I think there's going to be a thin, undamaged strip between it and the water."

They all turned to look at him. "What are you thinking?" Steve asked curiously.

"I think this is an animal," Monty replied. "Some sort of magical creature. And I think I might know which one, but I'd like to check out the lake first."

Not eager to hike in the dark, they apparated down to the nearest end of the shore of Loch Ness. Gabe dug out some flashlights and they passed them around, and they quickly found the continuation of the burned patch. "You were right," Dugan said, pointing down at the ground. A thin strip of green, about a foot wide, ran along the side of the lake.

Monty bent down to examine it. "Don't get too near the water, lads," he said absently, as if he had sensed Jim edging towards the water.

"I'm not gonna fall in," Jim huffed.

"No," Monty answered, still looking at the ground. "But if Nessie's real, she's either a water horse or a kelpie, and both of them quite enjoy dragging people down to the bottom of the loch to drown them."

"Oh," Jim replied, backing up.

"So, if you see any horses or naked women lounging about, don't touch them," Monty finished. Bucky chuckled, looking at Gabe who was laughing softly. They'd read enough about water horses and kelpies in Care of Magical Creatures class that hopefully they would all have better sense than that. And it was too dark to tell, but he bet the phrase 'naked women' had Steve going red as a tomato.

"So what do you think this thing is?" Steve asked.

Monty straightened. "I'm pretty sure it's a Nuckelavee."

"A Nucka-who-vee?" Dugan asked.

"Nuckelavee," Monty corrected patiently. He led them back up the hill to a larger burned area. "They're water horses from the sea—see? There's hoof prints here—and they're of a more…demonic variety.

"We're fifteen miles inland," Bucky pointed out. "What's one doing out here?"

"Well, oddly, being a water horse, Nuckelavees like to come on land, spreading blight and disease and whatnot, then return to the sea. They're a fairly common cause of crop failure."

"That's weird," Jim said.

Monty shrugged. "I don't make the rules."

"So," Steve started. "This is just some weird, semi-natural occurrence? Not Hydra testing out some new curse?"

Monty frowned. "I don't know. See, the thing is, your Nuckelavees tend to be about in the winter. There's this other sea creature, called Mither o' the Sea, that controls them. She actually holds them in, keeping them in the sea, for about half a year—during the summer. By the time winter rolls around, she's exhausted from holding them back all year, so they get out, run around and cause havoc, then she gets her strength back and reels them all in again."

"How do you know all this?" Gabe asked.

"I like Care of Magical Creatures. I do the extra reading."

"Back to the point," Steve said. "You were saying something about the seasons?"

"Right. They shouldn't be out this time of year. In fact, this is the time Mither o' the Sea should be at her strongest, as summer is just starting. So, I wouldn't rule out Hydra just yet. Controlling magical creatures to cause mass destruction would seem to fall into their line of work."

They were all quiet for a moment, thinking. "So, what do we do?" Jim asked at last. "How do we find out if it's Hydra?"

"We could go to Inverness," Bucky suggested. "We know there's at least a few Hydra guys there, and it's on the ocean—"

"It's more of a firth," Monty interrupted.

"But it leads to the ocean, right?" Bucky huffed. Monty nodded. "So, they could be doing something to this Mither thing from there, keeping it from keeping the demon horses in the water."

Steve nodded. "It's a place to start."

"Uh, Monty?" Dugan asked, staring over their heads. "You said this thing was a demonic water horse—does that mean it would be on fire?"

They all turned to see what he was looking at. It was completely dark now, but on the crest of a nearby hill was a ball of flickering flames, easily ten feet high. In the center was what looked like the outline of a man on horseback. With an ear-piercing whinny, the horse reared up on its hind legs and started galloping down the hill, hooves pounding the ground like thunder.

"Yep," Monty said breathlessly. "That would be it." He swallowed hard. "We need to get to the lake."

Even though Monty had just said to stay out of the water, they trusted him enough to know what he was doing. Unfortunately, the Nuckelavee was fast, and it seemed to have figured out what they were trying to do. It was down the hill and between them and the water before they had time to take more than a few steps.

Bucky stared up at the flaming creature in fascinated disgust. Never again was he going to refer to the Thestrals as 'demon horses'. This guy was more than deserving of the title. At first glance, it did look like a horse and rider, engulfed in flames, but a closer look revealed that it was only half a man—a legless rider fused to the horse's back. Or maybe it was growing out of the horse part—they seemed to be a solid mass of skinless flesh. The horse's eyes glowed red, the rider's merely dark hollows in a fleshy skull. It had an emaciated look to it—thin, stringy and bony, but shiny in the firelight with blood pumping through and across the flesh. The horse's head was high enough to look down at Steve, the rider towering higher still, with a sword seemingly made of rusted metal and bone melded to its hand. The air around it was thick with the scent of smoke and decay.

For a long moment, they faced each other, unmoving. "Don't let it breathe on you," Monty said quietly, eyes on the monster. "And steer clear of that sword. It's a creature of the sea—it can't stand fresh water. We need to get into the loch."

The horse reared up again and they all jumped back, splitting into two groups and trying to rush around it for the water. But it was fast and it was huge—it seemed to be everywhere they tried to go. "_Augamenti_!" Steve yelled from somewhere to Bucky's left, and a jet of water shot out of his wand and hit the horse full in the face. It shrieked like something coming out of hell, and Bucky thought his ears might be bleeding, but it backed away rapidly. Bucky pulled out his own wand, sending his own spray of water to join Steve's, then Dugan joined in from behind him.

Not sure how much time that had bought them, they ran for the lake. The Nuckelavee screamed behind them and thundered forward again, but it was behind them and the lake ahead of them, and they went as fast as they could go. Bucky lost his footing as the ground sloped downward, but rolling would get him into the water faster than trying to get up again, and he kicked off the ground and hit the cold, muddy water with a splash. Jacques grabbed his arm and yanked him deeper in until the water he was sitting in came up to his neck.

He wondered if it would be far enough, but Monty had stopped, so the rest of them did too. And it seemed to be working. The Nuckelavee stood back from the water, snorting and champing furiously, but coming no further.

"Someone watch the water behind us," Monty hissed. "We're safe from that thing, and it's likely keeping Nessie away, but…"

"On it," Gabe said, taking a deep breath and slowly turning out to face the open loch.

Bucky pushed himself back up to his feet—he wanted to be ready if anything happened. For several long minutes, they stood, staring at the creature and it back at them. Between them and the creature, little ripples appeared in the water, and Bucky realized it was dead fish floating to the surface. Then it gave one final snort of displeasure and turned away, running out into the open country. By the light rolling off of it, they could see more oats withering and dying. They stayed in the water until the ball of flame disappeared over a far hill.

"I think it's safe," Monty said. They trudged back up out of the water, putting some distance between it and them before stopping. The last thing they needed was _another_ water horse attacking.

"Alright," Steve said, letting out a long breath. "So, that was…"

"Terrifying," Jim supplied.

"Yeah," Steve nodded. He looked off in the direction the horse had disappeared. "Can we stop it?" To someone that didn't know Steve, that might have seemed like an insane question, but Bucky knew where he was coming from. It was still a dangerous monster, and people could get hurt. If they could stop it, they should.

Monty was shaking his head. "Not from here. They're really hard to kill. Spells won't do it, you need a special kind of sword like you would for a dragon, and I've not got any of those. I think we need to go to Inverness."

"To find the Mither thing," Bucky guessed.

Monty nodded. "She controls it, and if something's keeping her from doing that, we could find out what it is."

"Do you know enough about the Mither o' the Sea to know how to fix this?" Steve asked.

"Maybe," Monty allowed. "I'm guessing there's a human element involved. There are dark spells to control dark creatures, and that's the simplest explanation for this."

"And if we stop whoever's controlling her, she pulls old Nucky back into the ocean?" Jim asked.

"Should do," Monty agreed.

"Okay," Steve said. "Let's go to Inverness." They dried themselves off as best they could, then apparated away into the darkness with a loud crack.

It took most of the night to track down where the thing had come from. Sure, they could just look for a burned patch leading into the ocean—sorry, _firth_—but it was a big stretch of shoreline. And they had to duck and hide around the populated areas, because it was dark and there was a war on, and a group of teenagers sneaking around in the dark was going to raise some questions. Ultimately, they decided it would be best if Jim and Dugan did some tracking spells to find recent evidence of magic, with input from Monty to help with the magical creature aspect of things. It was still well after midnight by the time they were sure of which direction to go.

"Oh, yeah," Jim said, after they'd hiked out to a long, empty stretch of shoreline. "We are definitely going the right way." Whether it was because charms and picking them apart was what Jim was good at or what, he was generally more sensitive to the presence of magic than the rest of them. This time, however, his declaration was unnecessary—Bucky could feel it crackling in the air around them, growing stronger the closer they got. He was guessing that the way it made his spine crawl and made him just want to turn around and run the other way meant it was pretty dark stuff too.

"Okay, hold on," Steve said. They paused. "We're walking into something big here—have you found anything that might let someone know we're coming?"

Jim shook his head. "I've been checking every few minutes. No alarm spells."

"You wouldn't need 'em," Dugan put in. "Even non-magical folk can feel something like this, even if they don't know what it is. Everybody's steering well clear of this place."

"And we're sure it's a wizard, and not the Mither o' the Sea?" Steve asked, looking back at Monty.

Monty nodded. "The Nuckelavees are the dark creatures. She's more of a neutral nature spirit. Dangerous or benevolent, depending on how you treat her, but she wouldn't be putting off something like this. I'm guessing if this is a spell someone's using to control her, bad things are going to happen to that person when it breaks."

"Okay." Steve looked over at Jacques. "You up for scouting ahead and letting us know what we're walking into?"

Jacques grinned and nodded, then vanished into the dark. Twenty minutes later, he was back—evidently they weren't far away, but he got really technical after that and too fast to follow.

"Definitely Hydra," Gabe translated. "There's two of them, on top of a cliff. They've got a circle chant thing going and a bunch of green light, and something crazy is going on in the water below them. A…" He looked back at Jacques, who repeated his last statement. "A whirling vortex of death, to use his words."

"If we can stop that, it should break whatever the spell is on the Mither o' the Sea," Monty said. "Not sure how, though," he added.

"Well," Dugan mused. "If they're chanting, it sounds like a pretty active curse. Getting them to stop chanting might be enough to do it." He looked at Jacques. "You said 'green light'. Was it just glowing, or was it like fire?"

"Ça ressemblait à des flammes," Jacques confirmed.

Dugan nodded. "Okay. If it keeps going after they stop chanting, we'll have to put the fire out."

"Okay." Steve thought for a minute. "Dugan, you, Jim and I will work on getting them to stop and trying to get the fire out. The rest of you work on taking them down."

"And we'd best work quick," Monty put in. "It'll be dawn before too long. The Nuckelavee is on its way home."

"Jacques? Lead the way," Steve said, gesturing for them to get moving.

They didn't have much of an option, but Bucky didn't really like this setup. They weren't going straight up the side of a mountain or anything—they were already on the cliffs, but still lower down than where they were headed, and attacking anything uphill was always going to put you at a disadvantage. He wished he had his rifle on him—he could've taken out the curse casters from a safe distance. He hadn't thought he'd need it on a reconnaissance mission in an oat field, but from here on out, maybe he should just bring it with him all the time.

They saw the eerie green light before they heard the chanting. The sound was rhythmic and ominous, raising the hairs on the back of Bucky's neck. Once they had eyes on the two hooded figures by the light, they fanned out in a semi-circle, blocking their escape off the hill.

"Go!" Steve yelled, and they sprang forward.

The two Hydra wizards had evidently had a plan in case someone tried to stop them. One of them whirled around, firing spells as he turned, but the other remained by the fire, still chanting. Bucky took a moment to be impressed that the one by the fire seemed able to maintain both the spell and a shield charm, but yanked his attention back to his opponent. The towering figure was a skilled fighter, keeping the four of them on their toes and dodging their spells, firing back blasts of magic of his own. A shield spell of Bucky's deflected one that was shot at him, and it bounced off and shattered a boulder into tiny pieces, raining shards of stone over all of them.

They kept shooting spells at him. He kept firing back—something flaming orange shot out of his wand and exploded in the ground at Bucky's feet, sending both him and Jacques flying through the air. Jacques rolled down the hill, but Bucky was flying toward the cliff edge. He hit the ground hard and bounced, rolled, and felt himself going over. Bucky scrabbled at the ground and his hands caught on some kind of root, hanging on for dear life as the rest of his body fell out into space. He looked down, searching for a rock or some kind of foothold to push himself back up, and couldn't contain a frightened yelp at what he saw below him.

'A whirling vortex of death' was putting it mildly. The sea down below him was churning in a violent circle, spraying foam high enough to hit his dangling feet, the black water swirling down into a hole far deeper than should have been possible this close to shore. Deathly green light flickered in its depths, flashing like lightning through the dark water, and a hulking shape, dark and shambling, writhed in its center, howling at the sky.

Bucky felt the root in his hands starting to slide, and then a strong hand was wrapping around his wrist. Steve was there, crouching down and pulling him back up, one hand on Bucky and one holding up his shield, protecting them both.

"Thanks," Bucky panted, once he was back on solid ground. Steve nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, and returned to the fight, Bucky doing the same. Monty, Gabe and Jacques had pushed the big guy farther down the hill at least, and Bucky rushed back to help them, but before he'd gotten very far, an ear-piercing shriek shattered the night air. The Nuckelavee was back—whether finished with its work for the night or summoned back early by its new masters, it was bad news either way.

It charged toward them all. Monty, Gabe and Jacques seemed to have gotten the upper hand with their guy, so Bucky turned back to help Steve, Jim and Dugan. That was the only way he could see of stopping this thing. The four of them together managed to break through the chanter's shield spell, and he went down in a heap. Nothing seemed to have changed though, and Dugan yelled, "The fire!"

The _Augamenti_ spell did very little to the fire—because, of course, it was a magical fire, why would water work?—but it did seem to do _something_, so Steve and Bucky kept at it, whittling it down little by little, while Jim and Dugan tried various counter-curses.

Suddenly, the fire was out, and several things happened at once. The first was a searing wave of heat and the smell of death as the Nuckelavee reached the top of the hill, followed almost immediately by a sound that Bucky took a minute to identify. He'd never heard Dugan scream before.

Before he could take it in, though, the sea beyond the cliff roared, and dark water shot up into the air, towering above the cliff. Though it flowed and gushed and splashed, the column of water remained, and the longer it stayed there, the more vaguely human-shaped it looked. It roared again, lines of furious eyes and an awful mouth churning in the water, and the Nuckelavee reared back on its hind legs, then went silent, standing at attention. Bucky thought his heart might have stopped for a minute as he glimpsed more flaming shapes appearing on the beach below—there was more than one of them, and they were mounting the hill, moving so fast it was like they were flying. Seven of them stopped halfway up, forming a circle that kept all of them—including the Hydra wizards—trapped with their backs to a sharp drop down to the sea.

The water-person roared again, and the Nuckelavees charged up the hill, the first one rushing down to greet them. In an instant, the two Hydra wizards were carried away, shrieking as flaming hands, swords of bone, and horses' teeth consumed them. As soon as they vanished, the Nuckelavees turned as one towards the sea, into what appeared to be the welcoming arms of the watery figure. They all sank back into the water, and the sea was calm once more.

The boys stared at one another in shock, before a groan from Dugan pulled their attention back around just in time to see him collapse to his knees. They all rushed forward, and Bucky's hand flew to cover his mouth in horror—the Nuckelavee that had gotten to the top of the cliff had gotten close enough to breath on Dugan, and his right arm was blackened and dead, cursed by the blight that it spread.

"What the hell?" Jim murmured, dropping to his knees beside his friend and ripping his medical bag from his back. He touched his arm gingerly, like he was afraid it might crumble to dust like the plants had. "Dugan, talk to me—can you feel anything? Can you move it?"

"Hurts," Dugan grunted through clenched teeth, holding the arm tight against his chest.

Steve shot a look across the circle at Monty, but he just shook his head. Bucky really hoped that meant he didn't know what to do, not that there was nothing to do.

"Uh, guys?" Gabe said, looking at something beyond their wounded friend. The tower of water was rising up again, stopping level with the cliff top. It was still churning wildly, but no longer flashed with green lightning. It was coalescing into a figure again, but smaller this time, closer to human-sized. The shape standing atop the column of water was more recognizable too—definitely a person, and definitely a woman. Suddenly, she was no longer made of water, but a real, solid person, stepping down onto the ground. Her skin was a pale green, and her hair seemed to be made of seaweed, long and dripping with seawater. Clingy, dirty white robes that reminded Bucky of torn pieces of a sail wrapped around her body, dotted here and there with barnacles or shells.

"Mither o' the Sea," Monty whispered.

She looked at him and inclined her head serenely. She stepped forward and knelt next to Dugan. Sighing deeply, she closed her eyes and ran her hands down his injured arm. A wave of water washed over his arm, and the disease washed off of his skin like dirt. He looked up at her in amazement, but she just nodded again. She stood, held out her arms, then spun away into the sky, vanishing in a spray of water. The faint gray of dawn was suddenly dark again with storm clouds, and rain burst down out of the sky.

The drops were falling so thick and hard that they stung, but Bucky was staring open-mouthed at the ground. The trails the Nuckelavees had run were disappearing, blackened earth turning green once more. Grass and flowers and shrubs were popping back up out of the earth as if they'd never gone, and as the storm rolled away from them and headed south, he could imagine the stalks of oats straightening up and growing tall and healthy again.

"Wow," Steve breathed.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed.

"What the hell just happened?" Jim demanded.

Monty laughed. "We helped her, so she returned the favor." He looked over at Dugan. "How's the arm?"

"Good as new," he said, still sounding awed by it. Jim took his arm, poking and prodding at it gently, testing it for himself.

"And she's magic-raining on the crops because she felt bad the Nuckelavee got out?" Gabe wondered.

"Probably just restoring the natural order of things," Monty said.

"Well, that was one of the weirder missions we've been on so far," Steve declared. "You sure you're alright?" he asked Dugan.

"I'm great," he replied.

"Of course," Steve added with a smirk. "Since your hand's back to normal, there goes your reason for not writing your Potions paper that's due in a couple hours."

* * *

_For those of you interested in such things, the Nuckelavee and Mither o' the Sea are actual creatures of lore, and not just something I made up. _

_Hope you're all enjoying the story so far! I'd love to know what you're thinking. See you all with a new mission on Friday!_


	47. Nazis In France

_New mission time! Back to France again. Let's see if that goes any better than last time.  
_

* * *

After the business with the Nuckelavee, they'd had a couple of weeks off from missions. Now they were in France again, and if they ever got out of here, Steve and Professor Phillips were going to have a conversation about them keeping the Howling Commandos the hell out of France.

They were in the south of France—Avignon, which was pretty Nazi-heavy these days. Though Hydra generally kept their distance from Hitler and his boys—they thought they were beneath them—they seemed to have some sort of deal going with a Nazi officer in Avignon. A deal in magical artifacts, to be precise. Captain Mueller had access to a good deal of artifacts being 'liberated' from North Africa, and it was a quick hop across the Mediterranean and a slip up the Rhone to Avignon, where he sold his treasures to the highest bidder. And evidently, some of the things he was digging up had more than just historical value.

Since Mueller wasn't a wizard, how he knew which ones were magical—and thus, should be set aside for his Hydra friends—and which weren't was one of the things they were here to find out. They were also supposed to suss out his Hydra contact, figure out what kind of artifacts he was dealing in the first place and make a threat analysis, and grab anything that looked valuable before putting him out of business. Thus far, they were striking out on all four counts. It was hard to accomplish your mission objectives from inside a dungeon.

Steve still wasn't sure how exactly they'd gotten caught. All he knew was that he'd blacked out and woken up bound to a wall with actual iron shackles—the kind without chains that fixed his wrists directly to the wall above his head. The other end must have been embedded pretty deeply in the concrete, because Steve was having a hell of a time trying to tear them out.

No one else could remember getting caught either, so Jim was guessing Hydra had helped their buddy out and set up some sort of perimeter spell to catch intruders.

"We're in the middle of the freaking city," Dugan spat. "Who the hell has a dungeon in the basement of their townhouse?"

"Nazis," Monty growled.

Steve wasn't really paying attention to their grumbling. Yes, it was concerning that they were in a dungeon, but what was more concerning was that only half of them were down there. He had no idea where Bucky, Peggy, Gabe and Jacques were. "Guys, shut up," he snapped as they continued to bicker. He sighed. "Can anybody hear anything?"

"Nothing but the river, man," Jim said, shaking his head. Mueller's large house butted up against the Rhone, and a little diversion had been dug out that ran straight through the stone basement. If he had to guess, Steve would say it had been made for his shipping business. The boxes that lined the walls could be packed onto boats out of sight—and the metal doors that covered the entrance and exit added another layer of secrecy (and kept any unwanted noise from escaping).

Dugan looked worriedly in the direction of the door at the top of the stairs, his argument with Monty abandoned. "That's good, though, right?" he ventured. "If they were…hurting them and stuff, we'd, we'd hear it, wouldn't we?"

Steve hoped he was right. "Does anybody have _any_ ideas?" He'd been wracking his brains since he'd woken up, and he was coming up empty.

"We could wait for someone to come down here for us and rush 'em," Dugan suggested. Steve had thought of that too. There were a lot of variables with that one. And it was hard to rush someone when you were chained to a wall.

"No luck on the lock-picking?" Monty asked Jim.

Jim shook his head. "No. I can barely see, and I can't get at anything with my hands behind me like this." All of their stuff had been confiscated—and who knew where that was—but Jim had a little piece of wire he kept in his shoe. Unfortunately, he couldn't reach it with the way his hands were bound, and they were far enough apart that none of them could reach his feet either.

The door at the top of the stairs swung open and they fell silent. Framed in the light from the room beyond was Mueller—a large man, though skinnier than Steve would have thought. He descended the stairs leisurely, looking the four of them over with an air of mild boredom. He looked down at Steve, sniffing thoughtfully. "You are the leader of this little group of misfits, yes?" he asked. Steve didn't say anything, and Mueller sighed and waved a hand. A soldier appeared from behind him and levelled a gun at Jim's head. "Must I repeat the question?"

"I'm in charge," Steve said.

"Good. You will come with me." He moved forward to unlock the shackles on Steve's wrists, then paused. "If you try anything, Frans will shoot your friend, is that clear?" Steve nodded. "Good," Mueller said again. He unlocked Steve's hands and ushered him toward the stairs. Frans stayed behind, gun trained on Jim, even after the door closed behind them.

Mueller directed Steve down a narrow, wood-paneled hallway and into a small study that seemed incongruously homey for someone who kept people chained in a dungeon. "Sit," he said, pointing to a padded chair in front of the desk. Steve hesitated, and Mueller sighed again. He reached up and twisted a light fixture behind him, and, much to Steve's surprise, the wall behind the desk slid up into the ceiling. It revealed a large, well-lit sitting room with a long leather couch, a large mirror along the back wall above a bar where he could see their guns and gear laid out, small tables with green-shaded lamps next to cozy armchairs, and a bloody and unconscious Bucky in a chair in the middle of the room.

"Bucky!" Steve exclaimed. He glared at Mueller. "What did you do to him?!"

Mueller shrugged. "He was remarkably uncooperative." It pained Steve to think just how true that was. It wasn't something you should be able to say of anybody, that they were good at being tortured, but he knew that, as bad as Bucky looked, he had endured a lot worse than this.

"He is alive, though," Mueller continued. "You can make sure he stays that way." He smiled. "Have a seat."

Steve sat.

"Now," Mueller began, sitting down at the desk across from him. "I suppose we must open with the pleasantries. What is your name?"

"Steve Rogers."

"And how old are you, Mr. Rogers?"

"Fifteen."

Mueller raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. I would ask what you're doing here, but I think I already know. The S.S.R. has heard of my work, and come to investigate. What sorts of magical objects could this—I believe you use the word 'Muggle'—have to offer that would make Hydra take notice? Am I close?"

"That's pretty much it," Steve admitted. Considering that they'd been caught attempting to break into his house, it was hardly a secret.

"And yet, they send children to investigate? I must confess myself disappointed. It is rather insulting to realize one is considered such a low threat."

"What do you want?" Steve asked. There had to be more to it than this. This wouldn't have gotten Bucky beaten unconscious.

"Straight to the point," Mueller said. "Very well. I am in the business of selling powerful things to powerful people, and what I want, Mister Rogers, is for you to help me with that."

"How?" Steve wondered.

"You are with the S.S.R. I am sure you know all kinds of interesting things about them. Hydra is not the only side blending magic and technology."

"You can't use magic. What do you want something like that for?"

"Blended with ordinary technology, it does become something I can use. But my chief interest is my customers, who would be very interested in such things."

Steve wasn't sure whether he meant he wanted to sell the intel to Hydra, or sell the actual inventions to other Nazis. Either way, it was bad. "I don't know anything," he said.

"Don't you?" Mueller asked. "Because, after having gone through the equipment you brought with you, I am very much inclined to believe otherwise."

"Okay, fine," Steve admitted. "I do know stuff. Not gonna tell you, though."

Mueller smiled. "The others said that too."

Steve's heart skipped a beat at the mention of the others. "I want to see them." Bucky was accounted for, but three of his team were still missing.

Mueller shrugged. He waved a hand and a very large butler who'd somehow blended in to the shadows in the corner of the room opened a door at the far end. It revealed a kitchen where a furious Jacques was gagged, tied and bound to a pillar, and Gabe—who looked even worse than Bucky did—was lying in an unconscious heap at his feet. The butler closed the door again.

"I'm afraid we didn't ask too many questions of the dark one," Mueller said conversationally. "Frans got a bit carried away. And after him," he continued, waving a hand in Bucky's direction. "We decided not to bother too much with the little one and the girl if they were all going to be like that. I thought you and I might try a different approach."

"Where is she?" Steve growled. He hadn't seen Peggy in the kitchen.

"Upstairs," Mueller said with an uncomfortable grin. "She's well-looked after—providing she behaves. And you do too," he added. Steve swallowed down the urge to leap across the table and throttle the guy. He got the message.

"Now," Mueller said, leaning back with a satisfied smile and folding his hands in front of him. "I think you and I understand one another, but just to make things clear: If you do not give me what I want, all of you are going to die. Some of you more slowly than others, and you last of all, so that you can really feel the weight of how badly you failed your team before you go. Cooperate…" He shrugged. "I can't promise you freedom, but no further harm will come to any of you. Depending on how helpful you are, I might even be persuaded to offer medical assistance for…Bucky, you said his name was? And the other one," he added, waving dismissively to where Gabe lay in the kitchen. "It's up to you."

Steve considered. His gut reaction was to agree to give him whatever he wanted if it would keep him from hurting the rest of his team. That was followed in rapid succession by several admonishing voices all at once pointing out that: a) Why should he trust Mueller not to kill them all when he was done anyway? b) Bucky, Peggy, Gabe and Jacques would be pissed if Steve gave him everything and it turned out they had suffered for no reason, and c) Mueller was a Nazi and Mueller talked to Hydra, and neither of those factions needed any of the help Howard's inventions would give them. This war was bad enough already.

He couldn't do it. But he couldn't let him kill the rest of them either.

Could he lie? Act like he was giving him something, try to buy some time? His eyes drifted to Bucky, still slumped over, unmoving, in his chair. No. Bucky always said he was a terrible liar. When lives were on the line wasn't a good time to try to bluff his way out.

He could buy some time, though. Tell him the truth, just enough of it. Mueller already thought they were kind of pathetic anyway—that sneer when he bemoaned the S.S.R. sending children after him. Why not use that? People had underestimated Steve for fifteen years—he could roll with that. If Mueller thought he'd broken him, if he thought he was scared, he would let his guard down.

"Alright," Steve said quietly. He was used to being underestimated, but he wasn't used to giving up. He had to make sure to pay attention to his tone.

Mueller smiled. "Good answer." He waved a hand for Steve to go on.

Steve swallowed hard. His knowledge of Howard's stuff was theoretical, except for the stuff they used—he knew mostly how that worked, but that was what he was trying _not_ to give Mueller. He didn't think he could convincingly make an invention up, but there was _one_ development of the S.S.R.'s that he could talk about with authority. And giving it up—as long as he could keep the situation contained—wasn't going to hurt anybody but him.

"You work with Hydra," Steve said. "Do you know about Schmidt?"

"The leader? Yes."

"Do you know about his…um…" Steve wasn't really sure how to word it, but he gestured at his face. Mueller seemed to understand what he was getting at.

"His 'enhancement', you mean?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "They worked the bugs out of that."

"So I'd heard," Mueller replied. "You're telling me you know how the serum works?"

"I should," Steve said, trying to sound petulant. "They gave it to me."

Mueller's eyes lit up. "Really?"

Steve stood up, holding up his hands to show he wasn't going to try anything. He grabbed the arms of the chair next to his, then, with a grunt, tore it in half. He sat back down.

"Oh, very impressive," Mueller said. He was smiling now, a very predatory smile that showed too many of his teeth. "Tell me more."

"I can't," Steve replied.

Mueller arched an eyebrow, then turned in his chair, looking significantly back at Bucky. "If you need convincing…"

The butler moved forward again holding something that looked like a cattle prod, and Steve raised his hands. "No, no, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Don't! I…I don't know any more about how it works." He swallowed hard, only partially needing to act like he was nervous. This was the part of the plan where things had a good chance of hurting. He hung his head. "They, they explained it, but it went over my head. I didn't understand any of it."

"And yet you volunteered anyway?" Mueller wondered.

Steve shrugged. "They told me to. So I did. And it really hurt." Mueller seemed satisfied with that. Steve was just a kid—a big, dumb soldier who did what he was told.

"I…" Steve started. He looked over at Bucky. If Bucky was conscious, he would _not_ approve of this plan. "I know how you can get some, though."

That got Mueller's attention. "I thought it was destroyed."

"The stuff that didn't get used on me was," Steve said.

"Of course, the serum would be in your blood. It would need separating, of course, but…" Mueller said, looking Steve over thoughtfully. He stood. "Come with me."

"What about him?" Steve asked, nodding at Bucky. "You said you would help him and Gabe if I cooperated."

"I did. You need to cooperate a bit more first." He clicked his fingers. "Come."

Steve had guessed as much, but it was worth a shot. He also had a sinking suspicion as to what was happening next, but he'd been counting on Mueller wanting to do some experimenting so he could get to the next part of his plan. Didn't mean he was looking forward to it, though. (He was also really hoping that Mueller wasn't going to get into anything _too_ painful right off the bat.)

He followed Mueller upstairs, keeping an ear out as he went in case he could tell which of the closed doors Peggy was behind. They ended up in a small lab. "Some of the artifacts I acquire require testing before I know where to sell them," Mueller said, catching Steve looking around the room. "Sit down over there." He waved at a long metal table. Steve complied.

"What are you going to do?" Steve asked, working a little tremor into his voice.

"Verify your story, Mr. Rogers. And, if it is correct, begin my collection of your blood."

He turned around with a large syringe in his hand, and Steve backed against the wall. Mueller chuckled. "Don't tell me you're afraid of needles?" Steve gulped in response and Mueller laughed. "How on earth did you survive the application of the serum?"

"I told you it hurt," Steve said, pushing himself farther back.

He yanked his arm away as Mueller reached for it, and Mueller tsked disapprovingly. "Remember what I said about your friends and your cooperation? Give me your arm."

Gingerly, Steve complied. Mueller jabbed the needle into his arm with more force than was strictly necessary. Steve swayed a little as he watched the blood travel up into the glass casing, then as Mueller pulled the needle from his arm, he let his eyes roll back and he slumped forward, falling off the table and crashing to the floor. He hadn't planned on hitting the chair with his forehead on the way down, and it really hurt, but it helped to sell it, so it was okay. He lay crumpled up where he'd fallen, listening to Mueller moving above him.

Mueller had jumped back in surprise when Steve fell. He was quiet a moment, then kicked him roughly in the stomach. Steve barely grunted, continuing to feign unconsciousness. He heard Mueller walk away, muttering to himself in German. A few seconds later he was back, and Steve felt a pair of handcuffs snap tightly around one of his wrists. The other side clicked around a bar between the legs of the table. He'd been expecting as much, and after it sounded like Mueller had been on the other side of the room for a little while, he cracked one eye open, peeking out between his eyelashes.

Mueller was at a table on the other side of the room, doing something with Steve's blood and a microscope. He continued to mutter to himself, and though Steve didn't know any German, he was guessing from the disparaging tone and the way he occasionally snapped out the word 'American' that Mueller was less than impressed with 'the S.S.R.'s greatest weapon'. Mueller wasn't underestimating his strength, but he clearly didn't think much of the rest of him. Good.

Mueller wasn't there long before another man came in. So far, Steve's count of hostiles in the house was up to four. Mueller went with him, giving Steve another kick to check, and letting out a satisfied huff before leaving. Steve heard the door lock as they departed.

He gave it another minute before he sat up, just in case. Mueller had set Steve's blood sample in a small fridge on the side of the table, away from everything else, and that, combined with the fact that he'd locked the door, told Steve he wasn't hurrying back. Steve sat up and studied the cuff on his wrist. The cuff itself was too tight to slip his hand out, even if he tried breaking his thumb, and was large, chunky and solid. The chain connecting it to the table on the other hand…with the right amount of pressure, two of the links pulled apart with a satisfying snap.

Steve stood, crossed the lab, and grabbed the bloody slide from out of the microscope and the vial from inside the fridge. Letting Mueller take some of his blood had been risky, but Mueller was a man concerned with the bottom line. He was eager to sell Steve's blood, but he would keep it quiet until he was more sure of what he had to offer. After checking to make sure Mueller hadn't done anything else with the contents of the syringe, Steve poured the blood down the sink in the corner, making sure to rinse the vial and slide thoroughly. "Sorry, Mr. Nazi," he said. "No super-serum for you today."

That done, he sat back and pondered the contents of the room. Steve had guessed Mueller had a lab of some kind—if for nothing else than cleaning and cataloguing artifacts. That's why he had led the conversation to where Mueller would want a blood sample. He hadn't been expecting this much of a lab, but it was only a bonus. It gave him more options. He could pick the lock on the door easily enough—or he could just kick it down—but all of his gear was downstairs, and he'd have to fight his way to it before Mueller's guys could react by hurting his team. It was too risky.

But he didn't need to fight. He had a whole lab full of stuff to help him out. It had been several years since Steve's non-magical school days, but he'd paid attention in science class—perhaps more so than some people, since he was more fragile back then and needed to know what might kill him. He perused the shelves, noting the various chemicals and cleaning supplies, and he found an awful lot of glass containers with stoppers that were perfect for transporting liquids in and would also break very easily if you threw them. And, it was an odd sort of miracle, but evidently Mueller's Hydra contact did some work in here from time to time, because a locked metal trunk in the corner contained a useful selection of potion-making equipment—no doubt for testing the magical artifacts before buying them. And Steve had always been pretty good at Potions.

Keeping his mind on the time, Steve quickly filled as many of the glass containers as he thought he could carry with the most concentrated ammonia he could find in the chemical supplies or with bleach from the cleaning closet. He pondered the contents of the Potions locker and smiled to himself—not knowing how much time he had, there wasn't necessarily time to make a useful potion the right way. But potions made the wrong way, as Professor Erskine had reminded them frequently in class, could be very dangerous too. And based on what he saw in the trunk, he knew just the one to make incorrectly.

Rifling through the closet, he pulled out a leather satchel, discarded the papers inside, and carefully filled it with his glass containers. On a second thought, he picked the papers back up, flipped through them quickly, and stuffed them in his pocket. He couldn't read the German, but a couple of the names that jumped out suggested this might be some of the intel they'd been sent for. And, while he still planned on stopping this operation tonight, having intel never hurt.

A little tool from the table he'd been chained to was enough to get the door unlocked, and he used it again to remove the single cuff still hanging from his wrist. Steve stepped carefully out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. There were four doors between him and the one at the end of the hall that he could hear voices coming from. There was one between him and the stairs. Better to clear out the back of the hall first—didn't want anyone sneaking up on him.

He checked each of the four doors on his way to the back. No light came from under any of them, and no noise came from inside. He peeked inside each one to make sure—empty. Good. The door at the end was slightly ajar. Voices came floating around it, getting louder as he drew closer. They were all German—Steve counted three of them—and they seemed to be laughing about something. Steve slid out two of the glass containers from the bag he'd hung over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and flung the door open. Three men in uniform sat around a table drinking coffee. The talking stopped abruptly as Steve entered, and before they had time to do more than stare, he hurled the jars into the room where they both hit the table and shattered. Steve stepped back, yanked the door closed again and held it shut. They pounded on the door, trying to escape the chlorine gas, but even the three of them together were unable to wrench the door open with Steve holding it closed. After a minute, it went quiet. Steve waited another minute before opening the door and peeking inside, holding his breath long enough to confirm they were all down. It would be a while until they got up.

He made his way to the remaining door before the stairs. The light was on, and, seeing as there was no more upstairs, this had to be where Mueller was keeping Peggy. He set down his dangerous satchel against the wall. Toxic gases and corrosive potions should probably be kept out of the room where his teammate was.

He couldn't hear anything, but looking through the keyhole showed him a pair of boots that definitely weren't Peggy's propped up on the foot of a bed. Wishing he had his shield, he threw the door open and lunged in the direction the boots had been.

This guy was a little quicker on his feet than the first three, but that was fine, because that brought his face up nice and level with Steve's fist, and he hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

"Steve?"

"Peggy," he breathed, relieved, though his relief quickly dissipated when he laid eyes on her. She was sitting up against the head of the bed, as far away from her guard as it would have been possible to be, arms spread out with her wrists tied to the wrought-iron headboard. Her lip was split and bloody, dark purple bruising covered most of her right cheek, and her shirt was torn and slipping off one shoulder. Rage boiled up in his chest, whiting out his vision for a split second, but he stepped back for a second, closed the door, then rushed forward to drop onto the bed next to her. "Are you okay?" he asked, hurrying to untie the ropes around her wrists. "What happened?"

"I'm alright," she said, though she didn't sound entirely sure of that.

He got the last bit of rope undone and she flung her arms around his neck. He pulled her in tightly. She was shivering. "Peggy, what happened?" he asked again. "What did they do to you?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. It—I mean, they hit me a few times, downstairs, trying to—they wanted to know about the S.S.R.—things Howard was making and how he might be able to use them, and he decided to try something different and he sent me up here with _him_, and…"

A sick knot formed in Steve's stomach, thinking of the leer on Mueller's face and knowing full well what he'd been implying they had in mind for Peggy. "Peggy…" he started, pulling back to look in her eyes. One of his hands went to the torn material at her shoulder, pulling it back up carefully. Her eyes followed his hand, and she managed to smile a little bit.

"No," she said. "That happened downstairs. He didn't…He was certainly more handsy than he needed to be, tying me up, but—while he was very clear what he _intended_ to do if whatever this plan of Mueller's was didn't work, he didn't actually do anything. I'm fine, I, I don't know why I'm—he didn't _do_ anything, I shouldn't be this upset, I'm sorry, I—"

"Hey," Steve interrupted. "Come here." He kissed her forehead gently and pulled her back in against his chest, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head on top of hers. "It's okay," he said softly, stroking her hair with one hand, holding her tightly as she continued to shake. "I know you have to fight to get people to take you seriously all the time, but, Peggy, you have never had to prove to me how tough you are. I already know. And being tough doesn't mean you're not allowed to feel anything. You can be scared, and you can be upset. I would be. Hell, I _am_, and I wasn't even in here. Really…" He swallowed down a knot of anger. "_Really_ wishing I hadn't knocked that guy out so fast."

She huffed a surprised laugh at that and sat up, and though her eyes were glistening, no tears were falling, and she looked calmer. She nodded. Her eyes went to the door he'd closed. "I'm guessing we're a bit pressed for time?"

"Yeah," he sighed, not feeling like this was quite over yet, but knowing they didn't have the luxury of figuring it out right now. "Are you good to move?"

"Oh, yes," she agreed. "I hope you've left some of them for me."

He smiled. "There's definitely more downstairs. But when we get out of here, if you…"

She nodded. "I will. But for now, let's go get some Nazis." They moved for the door, Steve looking down to make sure the downed guard was staying down. As Peggy passed him, she brought down her boot in a kick that brought a pronounced groan from the guard, even unconscious, and made Steve wince, though he certainly didn't begrudge her the action. "Looks like you won't be doing any of those things you were talking about any time soon," she said in a frighteningly sweet voice that Steve hoped she never used on him.

They made their way to the top of the stairs, picking up Steve's bag on the way. "Do you know where our wands and weapons are?" Peggy asked.

"I saw them in the living room," Steve told her. "At the back. We've probably got a few more guys to go through to get there."

She nodded. "What's the plan?"

"There's a butler in the living room with Bucky, one more soldier downstairs in the dungeon, and Mueller and another guy somewhere in the house. Four upstairs out of commission. Do you know of any more?"

"That sounds right. I mean, I didn't see the whole house, but, yeah."

"I think we need to head for the living room first. Since we don't know if there are more than four, it would be nice to have weapons a little more reliable than household cleaning supplies."

Peggy smiled. "I wondered what was in the bag."

He smiled back. "Hey, it works. If I end up throwing any more of it, run away from it and don't breathe it in."

"Got it."

The living room appeared empty, with the exception of Bucky, who was still slumped over in the chair. They were halfway across the room when the butler appeared out of nowhere, and if he hadn't packed so solid a punch, Steve might have thought he was a ghost, because no one that big should be able to hide that well. Steve was rolling even as he hit the ground, keeping his bag from colliding with the floor and digging down in it at the same time. He pulled out one of the round jars and hurled it at the butler's face. It shattered on contact with his skull, and he howled as the ammonia started burning his skin.

Knowing the butler was hurt but not down, Steve kept rolling until he was clear, springing to his feet by Bucky's chair and lifting him up, dragging him back toward the bar and hopefully out of the line of fire. He crashed to the ground behind the bar and found Peggy already waiting, popping up to pull their bags of supplies down with her. They were making enough noise at this point that they'd lost the element of surprise, and Mueller, the guard who'd pulled him out of the lab, and a third guy who was not Frans hurried into the room.

Peggy was still digging through the bags trying to find where Mueller had put their wands, but Mueller and the soldiers had gotten their guns out, so Steve reached into the bag and pulled out the largest jar, full of murky gray liquid. He hurled it at the approaching attackers and the effect was almost instantaneous. The potion spread out, eating its way across the floor just like it had done in Erskine's lab back in November. Steve had been too busy then getting the crap burned out of his feet to appreciate it at the time, but it was fantastically effective. Mueller and the soldiers had been standing close enough together that they'd all gotten hit by the splash, and were all now yelling and flailing and scrambling to get out of the puddle eating its way through the carpet, legs of furniture, and their shoes.

Steve winced as Peggy, who'd evidently found the wands, hit one soldier and the butler with the Impediment Jinx, sending them both crashing into the puddle with howls of pain, where they writhed and splashed and eventually stopped moving altogether. The second soldier was knocked down by Mueller as he managed to lever himself up onto the stone fireplace and out of reach of the potion.

Peggy was staring at the mess, wide-eyed. "What the hell was that?" she wondered.

Steve grinned. "A very poorly mixed potion. And unfortunately for Mr. Mueller," he said, standing up. "I don't know how to make it go away. So, I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait over there," he finished, gesturing towards the fireplace. "Keep an eye on him," he told Peggy, accepting the wand she held out to him.

"Happily," she replied.

"I'm going down to the basement to get the other guys," he said. Yes, Gabe and Jacques were closer, but that guy, Frans, was still in play, and Steve would feel better getting down there and knowing he was eliminated first. "And…" He trailed off, another sick knot twisting in his stomach as he looked down at Bucky.

"I'll look after him," she promised.

Wand and shield at the ready, Steve carefully made his way to the basement. He couldn't exactly sneak in with the door being at the top of the stairs and all, so he was going to have to count on the element of surprise and quick spellwork to take down Frans before he could hurt one of his friends. To his surprise, no attack came when he opened the door, and he couldn't see the soldier standing guard over his prisoners.

"Steve!" came Jim's excited voice.

Steve's eyes adjusted to the light, and he saw Frans laying on the ground in front of Jim, not moving. Jim, Dugan and Monty were still all chained to the wall.

"You're alive!" Dugan declared, grinning broadly in the darkness.

"What the hell is going on upstairs?" Monty demanded. "It sounded awful."

"Awful for the Nazis, maybe," Steve replied, smiling. "There's not really time for all of it right now." With three quick flicks of his wand, he had the iron shackles unlocked. "Are you guys okay? What happened down here?"

"Well, the bozo was dumb enough to keep standing with the gun right at my head after you and Nazi Boss Man went upstairs," Jim said, standing up and rotating his arms to get the feeling back in them. "That's well within kicking distance."

"It was quite impressive," Monty said. "He just sort of flung his whole body up and wrapped his legs around his neck and smashed his head into the floor."

"Wow," Steve agreed.

"Problem was," Jim continued. "All our hands were still tied up, so we couldn't get the keys off him. So, we just had to hang around and see what was going to happen next. Kicked him in the face a couple more times when he started to look like he was coming around again," he added.

"Did you find the rest of them?" Dugan asked as they headed up the stairs.

"Yeah," Steve said. "Bucky and Gabe need you pretty bad, Jim, and I don't know what kind of shape Jacques is in, though he was conscious last I saw him."

Upstairs, Monty and Dugan headed for the kitchen, coming back with Gabe and Jacques, and Jim headed for the bar to retrieve his medical bag from Peggy. The potion on the floor was starting to dry up, so Dugan took over the guarding of Mueller and transferred him to a chair, tying him down tightly. Jacques and Monty moved cushions over from the couch and chairs to help Jim lay Bucky and Gabe out so he could get a good look at them. Peggy was digging through Mueller's desk.

"Peggy, you want to help me interrogate this guy?" Steve asked. Peggy would know much better than he would what kind of information he should be trying to get.

"I would love to." She set down the stack of papers she'd been shuffling through and picked up her wand.

Mueller was still looking a little shell-shocked by the sudden turn of events. Steve tried not to laugh at how personally offended the Nazi officer looked when he found himself being questioned by a girl, but Peggy was handling it beautifully, so he left her to it and set off with Dugan to round up the soldiers scattered around the house and move them down into the dungeon.

They had just secured the last one to the wall when a gunshot had them both bolting up the stairs. They burst into the living room to find the rest of their team looking unperturbed and Peggy holding Mueller's pistol, looking at him expectantly.

"This woman is crazy!" Mueller spat at Steve. Blood was pooling out across the top of one of his feet.

"This woman is starting to think that whatever you have to say can't be worth the trouble you're causing, and she will gladly shoot you somewhere that hurts more if you don't start playing nicely," Peggy replied coolly.

Steve shrugged as if to say, 'she's the boss', and Mueller swallowed hard. Peggy pulled the hammer back on the pistol, and Steve could hear Mueller start talking very quickly as he moved on to the end of the room to check on Bucky and Gabe.

"How are they doing?" he asked Jim.

"Jacques's okay," Jim said, not looking up from a colorful powder he was grinding in a small bowl. "Broken arm, bruises, easy fix. Gabe's got a nasty concussion and all of his ribs are broken, along with his nose and one of his hips. Lots of bruising and lacerations, mostly external, but pretty bad on one of his kidneys too. Bones are almost done setting, I've stabilized that kidney so it will hold until we get home, but I still want Rains to look at it, and the concussion will be okay in the morning. Bucky," he exhaled. "Cracked skull, missing seven teeth, and, based on the tearing in his throat, I think he might have swallowed a couple of them. Every finger on his right hand is broken, and very neatly too, I might add. They didn't smash his hand with something—they were deliberately and carefully snapped one at a time. He's got some weird burning across his torso—kind of electrical looking." Steve remembered with a jolt the cattle prod the butler had been holding earlier. "He's also got some internal bleeding that's worrying me a little," Jim continued. "But this should stabilize it," he said, holding up the powder. He poured a measure of some bright blue liquid into the powder while Steve let his words sink in. Jim worked a hand under Bucky's head to lift it, pouring the contents of the bowl carefully into his mouth. He looked up at Steve after setting the bowl down. "I realize that probably all sounded very gloom and doom, but they're both gonna be okay. Although, I support Peggy in her shooting of that creep, and would encourage her to feel free to do so again."

The sick knot in Steve's stomach only marginally untwisted at Jim's declaration that they would be okay, but he nodded.

He turned back to Peggy and Mueller, who was silent now. "You get what you needed?" he asked.

"He was very helpful," Peggy said. "How are they?"

"They'll make it," Steve said curtly. He fixed Mueller with a hard stare. "Was that you?" he asked, nodding his head back at his injured friends. He knew Mueller had mentioned Frans hurting Gabe, but that didn't mean he'd been the only one. Mueller didn't look like he was sure what to say, so Steve nodded at Peggy. "Shoot him again," he said.

"Wait, wait!" Mueller insisted, raising his hands as much as the ropes would allow. He swallowed hard. "Yes," he admitted. "Some of it."

"Okay," Steve said, nodding, right before his fist flew forward, shattering Mueller's cheekbone with an audible crack and sending him and the chair he was tied to crashing into the wall behind him and then to the floor. "Put him downstairs," he said to Dugan.

"Okay," Jim said a little while later.

"Are they alright?" Steve asked.

Jim nodded. "Yeah. They're both back in one piece, Bucky's not bleeding anymore, and I've got the internal damage cleared up for both of them as best I can."

"Will they be okay to travel?" Steve asked.

Jim pursed his lips thoughtfully. "If we have to, but the stuff that's beyond me to heal is patched up well enough to not be in danger of killing them, and seeing as we've got the house secured, it would actually be good for both of them to just not move and sleep some of this off."

Steve considered. "Yeah, we should be able to do that. Dugan?"

"On it," Dugan replied, setting off to set up their usual protective charms around the house, sealing up the doors and windows.

"Everybody okay with that?" Steve asked, looking around.

"Oui," Jacques replied, who was curled up in one of the chairs undamaged by the potion and looking half-asleep already.

"Works for me," Monty said.

"Peggy?"

"Yeah, it's alright," she said. "Although, I think I'd rather camp down here than use one of the rooms upstairs."

Steve nodded. "Yeah. You want to come raid the kitchen, see if there's anything to eat?" Nazi food was still food, and they could all do with a meal. She nodded and followed him into the kitchen. "You want to talk about it?" Steve asked as they started going through the pantry.

She sighed. "Do I have to?"

"No," he told her. "Just letting you know you can."

She didn't say anything for a while, inspecting some of the canned goods. "It's just…" she sighed. "It's not that they hit me. That's fine."

"No, it's not," Steve told her. Now that Jim was done with Gabe and Bucky, he was going to make sure he got Peggy fixed up.

She shot a small smile up at him. "No, it's just…It's a fight, you know? You expect that sort of thing to happen. But when we went upstairs, it…I've been scared before. I've been terrified before, but I…I've never been helpless before." She swallowed down a little tremor in her voice. "I know what he wanted to do, and I almost wished he would try so I could just…kick him or bite him or _something_. But he just sat there, and I was tied up and I couldn't get out, and I knew if he tried, really tried, I…there wouldn't've been anything I could do to stop him."

Her voice cracked and Steve moved over and slid his arms around her, and she tucked her arms up and held on to the front of his shirt and leaned into his chest. He didn't know what to say other than that he was sorry, and that didn't seem adequate.

"But you saved me," she said. "I've never needed saving before. I've always been able to take care of myself. And the fact that I couldn't tonight is…" She drew in a deep breath. "That's new, and I don't like it, and that's what's got me so…" She shook her head, not finding the word she wanted, but Steve knew what she meant. She looked up and smiled at him, and her eyes were watering again. "But I'm so glad you did. Thank you."

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "You're welcome," he said softly. He couldn't remember the first time he'd needed someone to save him, it had been so long ago, but he could understand how jarring that loss of control could be. "I'm sorry you had to…Well, I'm sorry. But, if it helps, we all need saving sometimes." She looked skeptical, and he huffed a soft laugh. "You listen to our team debriefs, right?" That got a smile out of her. "Or, you know," he continued. "Forget the debriefs, just listen to Bucky complain about me for a while." She laughed at that, and he smiled. "Peggy, you're amazing. You're strong and you're brave and you're a fighter, and needing help doesn't mean you're any less of that. It doesn't mean me or any of the other guys think of you as some damsel in distress," he told her earnestly, knowing that was at least part of why this was so hard on her. "Things go sideways on missions sometimes, and stuff like this happens. That's all it means."

Steve hoped all of that had been the right thing to say, and she was smiling, so it probably was. She slid her hands up and around his neck and pulled herself up to kiss him—gently, in deference to her split lip. "Thank you," she said softly. She sank back down to her feet, still smiling. "How'd you get to be so clever?"

He smiled. "Well, you know, there's this girl I like, and she's always saying wise things like that. I listen."

"As well you should," she replied, grinning.

They had dinner, and afterwards dug around for a while in one of the side rooms Mueller had been using to store his inventory. A lot of the stuff seemed to fall into the historical artifact realm—there was a jeweled scarab Steve was pretty sure was a couple of millennia old. Some of it was definitely magical, though, and they pored over it with interest. There were scrying dishes and cursed amulets, various jewels and pendants and charms that stored spells, and some fairly rare potion ingredients of the sort that came out of Egyptian tombs. Most interesting was a heavy metal box, carved all over with intricate hieroglyphics and emitting a faint sound very much like a heartbeat. Dugan cautioned them not to touch it.

"What do you think's in it?" Jim asked.

"I don't know, but it's definitely designed to keep something in—and sometimes all these kinds of lockboxes need is a touch to open."

"There's a little tag on the back," Monty said, craning to look around it. "Seventeen. Is it on that manifest you found, Peggy?"

"Mm…" Peggy flipped through the pages of one of the files she'd pulled from Mueller's desk. "Yes." Her eyes scanned the description quickly. "Oh, yeah, Dugan's right, nobody touch that."

"What is it?" Steve wondered.

"The still-beating heart of a ghoul. It's contained but very much alive, and it will…" She squinted, parsing out the German phrasing. "I'm not sure how this translates exactly, but if you open the box, it'll take your form, and I think it means it will do it in a way that will kill you."

"Why would anyone want something like that?" Steve wondered, trying to figure out who would possibly buy such a thing.

"And why put it in a box in the first place?" Jim asked.

"Well, if you've got the ghoul's heart in a box, it's not going to run around eating anybody," Monty said. "With the right magic, ghouls are fairly easy to control. I'm guessing Hydra's interested in this one because they're a good way to hurt a lot of people very quickly. These things tend to come up out of floors and eat people."

"Okay. So, let's leave it alone," Steve declared. "And we'll have Phillips send in some curse specialist people to deal with it. And everything else in here," he added. Not being sure what all this stuff did, they'd been careful to handle it as little as possible.

"Shucks," Dugan huffed. "I was hoping we'd get to blow this place up when we left."

"It's in the middle of a civilian neighborhood, we can't blow anything up anyway," Peggy reminded him.

"Can we set it on fire?"

"No," Steve said. "Listen, let's all try to get some sleep. I'll take first watch."

They filed back into the living room, locking the door of the storage room behind them. There were plenty of rooms upstairs, but Peggy wasn't the only one who didn't feel like sleeping alone in a Nazi's house. They dragged several of the mattresses down and spread out across the living room, avoiding the dried but still questionable area around the fireplace where Steve's potion had spilled.

Steve spent most of his hours of watch near Gabe, Bucky and Peggy. He got up every now and then to do a walk around the house, but he mostly sat perched on the floor beside Peggy's mattress and rested his hand on top of hers and watched over his friends. He knew Jim said they would be fine, but the fact that neither of them had woken up at all was still concerning. When his eyelids started to flag, he woke up Monty to take over. Jacques was keeping an eye on Gabe, so Steve settled down on the floor alongside Bucky's couch cushions, close enough to hear him breathing.

He wasn't sure if he'd be able to sleep, so he was surprised when he blinked his eyes open and sunlight was streaming through the windows. "Steve?" croaked a voice near his ear.

"Bucky!" he said happily, sitting up. Bucky groaned and Steve grimaced. "Sorry," he said. "Too loud?"

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "S'goin' on?"

He filled Bucky in on the events of the night, and by the end he looked ready to sit up. Jim came over and checked him out, pronouncing him safe to travel as long as he headed straight for the infirmary when they got home.

"Okay," Bucky agreed, and Steve knew he must still be hurting not to argue with that.

They gathered everything up, checked once more on the prisoners in the basement, and started apparating out. While it was the fastest way home, it wasn't easy on Bucky and Gabe, and Jim insisted they double-team it like he and Steve had done getting Bucky out of the factory. Jacques and Dugan helped Gabe, who was standing on his own a little better than Bucky and was inclined to be grumpy about the whole thing. Steve and Jim took Bucky again, and Monty and Peggy got all the gear.

Gabe was leaning much more heavily on Jacques after they landed, and Bucky threw up when they hit the ground. The blood mixed in with the vomit had Steve's concern ratcheting up several more notches, but Jim assured them that Nurse Rains could fix it up just fine. Thankfully, they'd apparated back to the front gates and not into Hogsmeade, so it wasn't too much of a walk.

True to Jim's promises, both Bucky and Gabe were healed up almost immediately, although Nurse Rains insisted on keeping them both in at least until lunch just to make sure. Much to Steve's relief, Bucky was feeling well enough to complain about it this time, though he didn't complain too much, since Vicki Marlowe came in and was making a fuss over him. Now everything really was okay.

* * *

_So, looks like France isn't big on the Howlies. Still, they made it out and it's all good. See you Monday!_


	48. Casualties Of War

_It's the end of the school year and time for the last mission of the term.  
_

* * *

Their final mission of the term ended on a low note. First off came the news from Germany—that girl, Damaris, that they'd gone to get information from on Peggy's first mission, had been discovered. Died in her sleep, local reports said—killed by Hydra, for those who could read between the lines. Bucky had never met her, but he knew she had to be incredibly brave to have been doing what she did for two years. They still weren't sure how she'd been exposed. Peggy was taking it hard.

On the heels of that came another joint mission with the 89th and 107th to one of Hydra's other factories. Technically, that mission counted as a success. They'd gotten in, they'd saved the prisoners, they'd blown the place to hell. That was a win, right? Trouble was, they hadn't all made it out. Sure didn't feel like a win.

It had gone smoother than last time, getting in. The 89th had done their thing with the prisoners, Monty and Dugan had gotten their explosives set, and they were all on their way back out. That was where it fell apart.

Once the factory had come under attack, the Hydra base commander had pulled a move none of them had expected. He'd left several soldiers inside to fight them, but sent at least half of them outside to ambush them when they came back out. They'd come around from behind, staying out of sight of the 107th—who were still fighting the guards who were _supposed_ to be outside—keeping to the shadows and waiting for them to come out in the open. Whether his super-senses had heard or seen something the rest of them hadn't, Steve spotted the waiting soldiers and called out to everyone to watch their backs and get their shield spells up.

Having lost the element of surprise, the Hydra soldiers rushed forward. Steve, Dugan, Jacques and Gabe stayed on the ground with the 107th, fighting off the soldiers. Jim and Monty were with the 89th, getting all the prisoners clear, and Bucky was on top of a truck, picking off their pursuers with his rifle. Once the last of them had made it out the gate, Bucky turned his attention to the fight in the yard. He still had a good view from on top of the truck, and he took out as many as he could as they converged on his friends.

It seemed to take forever for the number of soldiers to start dwindling. Long enough that Monty came back with half of the 89th to join the fight—Jim seemed to have stayed behind to patch up the wounded. Colin, Donovan and Dugan were in a huddle, shooting spells out so fast it looked like the air around them was glowing. Jacques kept dropping and rolling and popping up somewhere else, his long knife flashing. Monty was working with Alistair, tossing out smaller explosives and making sure none of the soldiers broke away after the prisoners, and Bucky caught flashes of Arthur and Kyle darting in and out of the fray. If there had been time for it, Bucky would have been surprised to see Gabe and Ethan fighting back to back, but as it was, he just fired several shots at the men rushing them, evening their odds, before turning his attention to the ten guys piling on top of Steve.

"You're an idiot, Steve," Bucky grumbled to himself, catching one in the chest. "Oh, yeah, I can take out ten guys on my own, no problem." He caught another one in the knee before taking him the rest of the way down with a gut shot. "I swear, that serum just enhanced your suicidal tendencies." Headshot. "Not to speak ill of the dead, but Erskine, you could've worked on that before you gave it to him." Knee, knee, kidney. "Honestly," he sighed, pausing to reload.

He rolled to hit one that was sneaking up on Ethan—yeah, he hated the guy's guts, but they were on the same side now—then picked off a couple heading for Monty. The fight was dying down now, tide turning in their favor. When it was over, they headed for the treeline, bruised and bloody and exhausted.

"Everybody okay?" Steve asked.

"Eighty-ninth, sound off!" Alistair called, walking toward his guys. Bucky did a quick head count, coming up with all of the Howling Commandos minus Jim.

"I've got Jim back there," Steve said, gesturing back behind him to where the prisoners were, still panting to catch his breath. "I've lost eyes on Jacques, though, Bucky have you—"

"Got him," Bucky replied. "We're all here."

"Good," Steve sighed, relief showing through the grime on his face.

"Eighty-ninth present and accounted for, Captain," Ethan said, materializing out of the darkness. "Getting a count on the prisoners now." He disappeared again.

"Donovan, what…" Steve looked around. "Where's Donovan?"

Bucky turned, searching the woods behind him. "I don't know, but I saw him…" He trailed off, thinking. Had Donovan made it out? Yeah, yeah, he'd been behind Dugan, and Bucky had seen them over there. "I saw him get out."

They still couldn't see him. "Donovan?" Steve said into the radio on his shoulder. "Donovan, come in, we need a count on the 107th."

There was no reply for several seconds, then Colin's voice came over the line. "He's here, Captain, we've just…Arthur's down, sir."

"I'm on my way." Steve marched off through the trees, Bucky close behind him. Sick knots twisted in his stomach. When Colin said he was down, did he mean…? It could just mean that he was hurt, but he would've said that. He would've…

They reached the huddle of people that was the 107th, and they parted to let them through. Donovan was kneeling on the ground, contents of his medical bag spread out in front of him, bloody to the elbows. Arthur lay on the ground beside him, staring sightlessly at the sky, a gaping, mangled hole across his stomach.

Donovan was shaking his head, tears washing clean streaks in the dirt on his face. "I tried," he said shakily. "I wasn't fast enough, I couldn't—" His breath hitched in his throat. "I tried," he whispered.

"I know," Steve said, moving over to rest a hand on his shoulder. "I know you did. It's not your fault."

Colin reappeared with a blanket he'd gotten…somewhere, and Bucky moved to help him wrap it around his teammate. Kneeling by his head, Bucky reached out a trembling hand to close his eyes. He rested his hand on his forehead for a minute. He was really dead.

Arthur was in Slytherin and in the year above them—Bucky hadn't really known him before being assigned to the 107th. He had the sharpest eyes of the group, always acting as lookout. He reacted to everything bad that happened by telling some kind of joke—a coping mechanism, he'd later admitted to Bucky after they'd been chased half the night by dark wizards. If he didn't laugh, he was worried he might start crying and never stop. Bucky found himself unexpectedly smiling as he thought of Arthur after they'd gotten caught at the factory. He'd made up a song that had reached thirty-three verses by the time they got out, one that was incredibly abusive towards Grindelwald, Hydra, Germany in general and the boss of the work force in particular, and probably the only thing that had kept him from getting shot for it was the fact that their guards didn't speak English well enough to realize how insulting it was. It had quickly spread around the factory floor, and they all sang snatches of it as they worked. Even Ivan had gotten down a verse or two.

Once Arthur's body was wrapped, Steve knelt down to pick him up. Donovan moved like he wanted to protest, though he didn't seem to know what to say. "It's alright," Bucky said, putting an arm around him. "He's taking him home."

It was a subdued group that returned to Hogsmeade. Steve was in with Professor Phillips for a long time, and Bucky walked Donovan back to their dorm. He directed him to the showers—Arthur's blood was still all over him—and Donovan nodded numbly and stumbled off that way. When he came out, Bucky sent him to bed, along with a cup of Willow's tea.

He showered himself, then, wanting to get all the dirt and blood and smell of smoke and death off of him. He didn't go to bed, though, returning to the common room and sitting down in front of the fire, curling his legs up into his chair and wrapping his arms around them.

It was war and people died and Bucky knew that. Hell, Bucky caused some of that, and it still sat uncomfortably in his stomach if he thought about it too long. But that was how wars worked. Arthur wasn't even the first student from Hogwarts to have died in this fight—not everyone had survived their three weeks in the factory. But the factory deaths were relegated to a corner of Bucky's mind along with all the other awful things that had happened there. It was a self-contained little bubble of tragedy that he could lock up and stay away from.

On all counts it was something of a miracle, but no Hogwarts students had ever been killed in combat before. People had gotten hurt, sure. Some of them bad enough to be pulled out of the fight for good, but no one had died.

But now Arthur had.

Bucky dashed his arm across his face, rubbing the tears away that were pooling in his eyes. He didn't think they were invincible or anything. Enough had happened to him—had happened to everyone—he knew how fragile they all were. But even though the threat of death was always there, every time they went on a mission, he'd never thought it would _actually_ happen. Not really. Because it never did.

He wondered if he would feel this way if it was someone he hadn't known. He'd worked with Arthur, trained with him, fought alongside him, made jokes and talked about girls and wondered when the war was going to end. They'd gotten caught together, survived it together, kept fighting together. He knew Arthur. He liked him. And now he was gone.

His thoughts continued to wander, and eventually, Bucky fell asleep. It was just after dawn when he woke up, sunlight breaking through the window across the room. The fire was long since out. Someone had draped a blanket over him while he'd been asleep.

He went back to his room to get dressed. He'd assumed Steve had been the one to cover him with the blanket, but as far as he could tell, Steve wasn't in the dorm. His bed did not appear to have been slept in.

Bucky went to breakfast and he sat there for a while, drinking a glass of orange juice but not really eating, soaking in the sounds and feelings of people just being alive around him. He was a little surprised when Becky sat down next to him—it was a little early for her to be up on a Saturday.

She looped an arm around his waist and leaned over against his shoulder. "You okay, Jay?" she asked.

He sighed. "I'm fine. Just…" He looked down at her. "A guy got killed on our mission last night."

"I know."

He arched a surprised eyebrow. "You do?"

She nodded. "Jim told Esther about it after you guys got back last night." She gave him a soft smile. "That's why I asked." She swung her arm around to meet the one she already had wrapped around him and hugged him. "I'm sorry."

He looped one arm over her shoulders and hugged her back. "Me too."

"Was he your friend?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, nodding slowly. "I mean, we weren't, like, best friends or anything, but we liked each other. He was in my unit back before."

She nuzzled her head against his shoulder. "How can I help?"

He smiled at that, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "You already are. I love you, Munchkin, you know that? I don't tell you that enough."

"I love you too, Jay." She hugged him again and pulled back, searching for something in the pocket of her robes. "Here," she said, pulling out something wrapped in a napkin. "You can have this."

"What is it?" he asked, eyeing the crumpled paper skeptically.

"One of the cookies Mama sent last week. I know you ate all yours already. This is the last one, but I think you maybe need it more than me."

He laughed. "That's real sweet of you. But I don't want to eat your last cookie."

"Well, you're gonna," she declared, setting it down in front of him. She pulled it away again. "After you eat your breakfast," she added.

He still hadn't seen Steve by the time breakfast was closing, so Bucky decided he should go look for him. All of them were taking Arthur's death hard, he knew, but Steve, now that the time for action had passed, was probably figuring out ways to make the whole thing his fault.

It took him a while to track him down. It was a big castle, with lots of places for miserable people to wander off on their own. After checking some of the more obvious places, Bucky decided to head outside—there were more places to wander off and think, and after checking a few of the courtyards, Bucky spotted him down by the lake, sitting on that same boulder he'd been on when he'd gotten rejected by the Army. That hadn't even been a year ago, but it seemed like a lifetime.

"Hey, Steve," he said softly, approaching the rock.

"I'm fine, Bucky," Steve said, not turning around.

Sure, he was. Bucky hopped up onto the rock and sat down next to him. Steve was staring out over the water, his face hard and distant. He wasn't crying, but he had been. "Have you been out here all night?" Bucky asked, giving him a quick once-over. He was still in his uniform, his face somewhat free of last night's dirt.

Steve shrugged. That was a yes.

This wasn't the time to get after him for not taking care of himself. Bucky just sighed. "Talk to me, Stevie."

Steve shrugged again. "What's there to say? He's dead."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "It's not your fault."

Steve finally turned to look at him, one side of his mouth curling up angrily. "You _would_ say that," he snapped. "You always…I don't need you to coddle me, Bucky. I screwed up, and Arthur's dead because of it. Of course it's my fault."

Bucky didn't rise to the bait. "No, it's not," he said calmly.

The anger was already gone from Steve's face, his mouth twisting up as he tried not to cry again. "I'm in charge. It's my job to keep you guys safe. I should've…" He sniffed. "He did what I told him to, and that got him killed."

"Steve," Bucky said, putting a hand on his arm. "You didn't make Arthur do anything. He joined this war because he believed that killing people that are different from you is wrong. He could've backed out after Italy. Some people did that. He could've said no to this whole combat thing and stuck with the recon missions. A lot of guys did that too. But he didn't. This was what he wanted to do."

"I doubt very much that he wanted to die in the woods hundreds of miles from home," Steve spat.

"No," Bucky agreed. "But he knew he might. And he was willing to take that risk. Because he was fighting for what he believed in. Steve, every one of us is out there because we want to be. And if we're following you, it's because you're a hell of a leader. We've been in enough situations that a lot of us should have died before now, and we didn't because of you. Because you planned, and because you thought it out, and sometimes just because you punched your way to where you wanted to go."

"If I'm so good, why didn't I see this coming?" Steve countered.

"Because sometimes things just go sideways and there's nothing we can do about it. You can have all the skill and all the luck in the world, and sometimes it all just goes to crap. I am so, _so_ sorry that it had to happen like this, but, Steve, none of it happened because of you. Hell, none of us were expecting them to react like that, and if you hadn't figured out what was going on as quick as you did, Arthur wouldn't be the only one that didn't make it."

Steve blinked up at him uncertainly.

"I mean it, Steve," Bucky pressed. "You saved a lot of lives last night. But sometimes, you…" His voice was starting to waver a little bit. "Sometimes you can't save everyone. And not because you should've done better. But because you just can't." He took a deep breath. "This is on Hydra. You lay it at their feet like every other awful thing they've done, and when we win this war and stomp them into the dust, we'll do it for Arthur. It's on them. Not you. Don't let this eat you alive, Stevie. Don't let 'em win like that."

The tears pooling in Steve's eyes started trickling down his cheeks, and he sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, giving a tiny nod.

Bucky smiled sadly, nodding back. "Come here," he said, putting his arms around Steve's shoulders and tugging him in for a hug. Steve folded into the embrace, and somehow, all five-foot-eleven of him fit against Bucky's chest and under his chin like he was still four-foot-five. Bucky rested his head on top of Steve's and patted his back. "It's gonna be okay," he whispered, and he held on to his friend and just let him cry.

* * *

.


	49. OWL's And Driving Tests

_We last left our heroes at the end of a rough mission, so here's a bit of fluff to perk things up before the new school year.  
_

* * *

There had been a memorial service at school for Arthur—Donovan had gotten up to say something, as had Arthur's parents. They found Steve afterward, and to his great surprise, had thanked him for saving their son back in November, and for how he had led his team and the others.

"He spoke very highly of you," Arthur's father said, and his eyes were watery and his voice wavered, but his grip was firm as he shook Steve's hand.

Steve hadn't known what to say to that, but he must have said something, because they both smiled and thanked him again and moved on. Bucky had finally convinced him that Arthur's death wasn't his fault, but that didn't mean he didn't still feel the weight of the whole thing. To know that neither of Arthur's parents blamed him for it was…The weight wasn't gone, but it was a little bit lighter.

There would be no more missions this term. Not because of Arthur's death, but because O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. exams were fast approaching, and Phillips was determined that they have time to prepare. Steve had known objecting would do no good. And maybe, after Arthur, maybe it would be good for them to spend some time off the field.

That being said, the stress levels in the dorms had risen so high that fighting dark wizards would have been a nice break. Fifth-Years and Seventh-Years were staying up later and later into the nights, studying and practicing and slowly tearing their hair out.

"I don't get it," Bucky said. The exams were two days away, he'd been running agitated fingers through his hair so much that it was standing straight up, and his eyes were looking a little manic. "I don't feel like the fate of the world rests on my shoulders this much when I'm fighting freaking _Hydra_."

"Phillips does have a knack for those 'this is your whole future' speeches," Steve agreed, flipping through his notes. Why had he written something about belladonna and tomatoes? Was that important? Where was the rest of the information?

Bucky snorted. "Phillips, Marsh, Perkins, Spark, Caan, Kendall, take your pick. The only staff member around here not talking like my whole future is at stake is Rains, and that's probably just because I haven't been to the infirmary."

"Do you know why I wrote that belladonna is like a tomato?" Steve asked, only half-listening. Usually, his notes made sense.

"What?"

"I think I'm missing a page."

"Steve, forget the belladonna. We're talking about our future here."

"But what if it _is_ our future, Bucky? What if it's going to be on the test?" Steve ran a frantic hand through his hair, unable to find the page of notes that had to be _somewhere_. "What if this question is the tipping point between passing and failing? I'm going to have to drop out of school and learn how to weld!"

There was a beat of silence where he could feel Bucky staring at him before he started laughing so hard that everyone in the common room paused to stare at him. Bucky curled in on himself laughing, his face beet-red. "You…you…" He was laughing so hard he couldn't finish the sentence.

Steve thought back over what he'd just said and realized how absurd that sounded. A smile curved up the corners of his own lips.

Bucky continued to laugh, rolling out of his chair and hitting the floor with a painful sounding thump that he failed to notice. "You're so ridiculous, Stevie," he wheezed as he caught his breath. Steve was laughing now too. Bucky sat up, managed to rein in his laughter, then looked at Steve and started laughing again. It was several minutes before either of them could speak again.

"Learn how to weld?" Bucky asked finally, still chuckling.

"I…I don't know," Steve replied with a smile.

Bucky shook his head. "Alright." He stood up. "I think we've crossed the productivity line for the night." He gathered up his stack of books. "Time for bed."

Steve never did find the page explaining the relationship between belladonna and tomatoes, but the Potions and Herbology exams came and went without asking about it. As far as the practicals, he was pretty sure he'd aced the Potions one, and the examiners had all been impressed by the Howling Commandos and other units' skills in Defense Against The Dark Arts. Exams dragged on for a whole week, with no time in between to take a breather—as soon as one was done, it was time to cram for another one.

_Describe the incantation and wrist movement necessary to produce a shield spell_. Steve smiled, thinking back to an empty classroom and after school practices with Bucky. Oh, he knew that one.

_What is the ratio of dilution required for Basilisk venom to be safe for contact with bare skin?_ Yeah, he remembered that one too. He'd gotten it right the first time, even if other people in the class hadn't been so fortunate.

_List the differences between Black Dogs, Grims, and Church Grims_. Well, Church Grims usually weren't dangerous, for starters…

_What was the significance of the Goblin Delegation of Latvia's presence at the Treaty of Weems in 1573?_ Steve had no earthly idea. He came back to that one at the end of the test and still couldn't get it. He doodled a little goblin in a top hat instead.

On and on and on it went, and maybe he'd just studied really well, or maybe Phillips had been overselling how hard these things were, but it wasn't _that_ bad. Sure, he'd take Nazi wizards any day, and his brain physically hurt from cramming so much information into it, but when he finally dropped down to the Hufflepuff table for lunch on the last day, the exams were over and he was still alive, and he felt like he could say he'd _probably_ passed everything.

"Oh, I'm going to go home and sleep for a week," Jim groaned, plopping down next to him and dropping his head to the table. "My brain's not leaking out my ears, is it?"

Esther giggled, reached across the table, and poked him in the ear with a carrot, making him sit up abruptly. "Just you wait," he told her, rubbing at his ear. "You're gonna take these things one day."

"How were your exams, Esther?" Steve asked. Sure, he'd love to have something as easy as First-Year exams _now_, but he remembered how hard they'd seemed at the time.

Esther launched into a dramatic monologue, which only got more dramatic when Becky came in and joined them.

Blissfully, they had the afternoon off, and the grounds were full of students lounging in the grass and under trees, soaking up the sunshine they'd been staring at out the window all week. "I'm so glad we're done," Peggy sighed happily. She was laying on the grass, head resting on Steve's leg. He hadn't seen much of her during exams, and it was good to see her smile again. Between what happened to Damaris, and then Arthur, then the stress of O.W.L.'s, she'd been very sober.

Steve was leaning back against a tree, suddenly struck by the fact that it was summer and he was outside and pollen was drifting through the air, not bothering him a bit. He smiled. Peggy was happy, exams were done, and he could breathe. The end of term _was_ turning out alright, wasn't it?

"Now we just have to wait for results," Monty said.

"Ssh!" Gabe said, tossing a fistful of grass at him. "What's the matter with you?"

"What happens if we don't pass?" wondered Kelly, leaning against Gabe and seeming more curious than concerned. Coming out of a non-magical family, Steve guessed she didn't feel the need to get a job in the magical world as severely as someone like Monty would.

"Then we have to go to welding school, right, Steve?" Bucky said with a wicked smirk.

"Shut _up_," Steve said, reaching out a hand to smack him, but he was just out of reach.

"What?" Jim asked.

"Nothing," Steve mumbled, feeling his cheeks going red.

Peggy looked up at him curiously while Bucky chuckled merrily to himself. "I'll tell you later," Steve told her.

The train ride home was long, and the exams must have tired Steve out more than he thought—he fell into bed after dinner and didn't get up again until ten the next morning. (Bucky slept until Mr. Barnes came into the room and tipped his mattress up and rolled him onto the floor to get him up for lunch.)

The summer passed relatively quietly. It was hot and muggy, something greatly relieved by the opening of a public pool near the park. They were down there almost every day, along with what seemed like half of Brooklyn. After discovering that the super-serum did not protect him from getting sunburned, Steve made sure to keep up with his sunscreen when they were at the pool. (He _did_ heal up from the burns faster, but in some ways, that was worse, because he hit the peeling stage very quickly, and the dried skin constantly falling from his shoulders was kind of disgusting.)

Something new about this summer was that Steve and Bucky were both sixteen now, and Mr. Barnes agreed to teach them how to drive. Bucky had brought it up over Easter Break—he'd been sixteen then. Mr. Barnes was very protective of his car, and he'd hemmed and hawed and finally agreed to do it after Steve turned sixteen—that way he could teach both of them at once and be done with it.

There was a book on driving that they took turns reading, and Mr. Barnes took them down to the garage to go over the car, explaining what everything did. It still took some, Steve wouldn't exactly call it _whining_, on Bucky's part before he finally let them take it out of the garage. After all the talks they'd received about being careful and how dangerous it could be, Steve was petrified and refused to go first. Admittedly, it was the thought of damaging Mr. Barnes's car more than the thought of getting into some sort of accident that scared him, but still.

Bucky was more than happy to go first. They set off one afternoon, Bucky behind the wheel, Mr. Barnes in the passenger seat and Steve in the back, leaning forward so he could watch. "Pop, I'm going about three miles an hour," Bucky said as they pulled out into the side street. "You can take your hand off the emergency brake."

They did a round of the block before coming back and having Bucky back into the garage. Nothing had happened on the ride, nor did Bucky hit anything as he was reversing, but his pop looked so much to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time he turned the car off that Steve said, "You know, we can do me later."

"No," Mr. Barnes said, regaining some composure. "The less time I have to drag this out, the better." Steve and Bucky switched seats, and they started again.

It took Steve a couple of tries to get the timing with the clutch just right and get the car going. Once it was on, he eased out into the street, looking both ways several times before inching out of the garage. There were no other cars around, but Steve was still careful to check his mirrors and use his turn signal. Mr. Barnes's hand twitched towards the emergency brake every several seconds—he'd done the same with Bucky—and though he never grabbed it, it made Steve so nervous he finally had to force himself to stop looking.

He did stall out switching the car into reverse when they got back to the garage, but other than that, he thought he did pretty well. Mr. Barnes declared that to be enough for one day and shooed them away, poring over every inch of the car as they walked away.

Subsequent lessons were less nerve-wracking. Steve was getting a feel for the size and handling of the car, and Mr. Barnes was starting to relax as they failed to run into any walls or fire hydrants or small children. It did take some coaxing to be allowed to drive where there was traffic, but one of the advantages of taking it so slowly was that they were much more confident in the handling of the car by the time they did. It involved a lot more changing gears, and Steve only stalled out once at a red light. (Bucky did it twice.)

They went in for the test for their licenses and both passed, which was very exciting. (Steve went ahead and took the test for a motorcycle license too—he was so close to being done with that bike.) Bucky teased Steve that it was a good thing he was taller now, since Little Steve probably wouldn't have been able to reach the pedals. Steve grumbled at that, but it was probably true.

Speaking of being taller, he had officially hit six feet tall, which was even more exciting than getting his driver's license. Never in his life had Steve ever thought he would get that tall. He was a little surprised by it—he kind of figured the serum had done all his growing for him, but Mrs. Barnes pointed out that he was still only sixteen, and most teenagers were still growing then. He hadn't thought of that, and he wondered how much taller he was going to get. (Bucky was taking it with good grace for the most part. Neither of them had ever figured that Steve would hit six feet, but even more surprising was the fact that he had done it before Bucky. Bucky was keeping up—he was an inch and a half shorter than Steve—but he hadn't quite caught up yet.)

In the last week of break, Steve had been able to put the final touches on the motorcycle. Pride swelled in his chest as it rumbled to life—he'd built it up from a pile of junk, and now it actually worked! He took it out for a ride the evening he finished it before letting anyone else know it was done. He wanted to savor his accomplishment for a while.

When he got back, he shared the news with Mr. Barnes and Bucky, and they both came down to admire the finished machine. He mentioned how well it rode, and Bucky warned him that he'd better not take it out again without a helmet if he knew what was good for him.

Steve still wasn't sure if the bike would be useful on missions, but he really wanted to keep the possibility open. Bucky agreed, and they spent a couple of days trying to figure out ways to get it to Hogwarts. He couldn't exactly stuff it up in one of the luggage racks. They hit on a shrinking spell, and—under the supervision of Mr. Barnes, so they weren't _technically_ breaking any rules—they tried it out and surmised that it would stay shrunk for twelve hours before the spell wore off. It would make the trip just fine as long as Steve remembered to get it out of his trunk and put it outside somewhere as soon as they got back.

* * *

_So our boys can drive now-the Nazis had better watch out! (We'll get a chance to see Steve put his new driving skills to work against Hydra before too long.)_

_The line about dropping out of school and learning how to weld is not a dig at welders or anything, but it is a direct quote from a girl in one of my American Lit college classes that I have been trying to figure out a way to use in a fic for 12 years. _

_Oh, and belladonna and tomatoes are both nightshades, in case you're wondering._

_Have a great weekend! See you all Monday!_


	50. They Delved Too Greedily, And Too Deep

_Alright. Sixth Year, and time for more adventures! The boys are going intercontinental this time.  
_

* * *

Sixth Year started off with them selecting their classes for the year based on their O.W.L. results. Bucky had passed all his tests with varying degrees of success—he'd scraped by in Divination, and the fact that he'd passed History of Magic surprised him. He was happy enough to drop those two. Both he and Steve decided to stick with Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against The Dark Arts, Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures. Neither of them had any idea of what they wanted to do after school, so a range of subjects helped them keep their options open.

During their first meeting after getting back, Professor Phillips had commented that everyone on the Howling Commandos had the grades to get accepted into Auror training after school. On the one hand, that was pretty awesome. On the other hand, Bucky wasn't sure that was what he wanted to do. Yeah, what they were doing right now was kind of like being an Auror, and he was good at it and he usually enjoyed it. But it was a war, and he was fighting for a cause he believed in. It was great, stopping bad stuff and knowing he was helping make the world a safer place, but…He didn't think he wanted to spend the rest of his life fighting.

It wasn't like he had to decide anything now, though. He had time.

Now that they'd taken the O.W.L.'s, their classes were a lot smaller as people broke off into areas they wanted to specialize in. Potions, in particular, was quite small. This year, there was only one class at the Sixth-Year level, and there were ten people in it. (Bucky and Steve were, of course, two of them. Their roommate, Morris, was there, along with Peggy and Jim. So was Peggy's roommate, Kelly, Eileen Leahy from Ravenclaw, who Bucky had briefly gone out with in Fourth Year, two Slytherins named Alex and Phillip, and, joy of joys, Ethan Green.) They started off with a supremely dull lecture about distilling potions to identify their ingredients, before each table was given a mystery cauldron and told to figure out what was in it. They'd be working on it for the rest of the week.

Not for the first time, Bucky found himself missing Professor Erskine. He was much better at answering questions than Kendall was, and he was far more pleasant. "Does he seem pissed off to you?" he asked Steve.

Steve shrugged, eyes on his test tube. "Not any more than usual. I always kind of got the feeling he doesn't really like kids."

"Oh, well, good thing he became a teacher, then."

Steve chuckled. "You have the quartz?"

"Yeah." Bucky handed over the bowl of quartz he'd been grinding. It was supposed to make the ingredients easier to separate. Steve sprinkled some of it into the test tube, the contents of which started bubbling almost immediately. "Ow!" Bucky exclaimed as one of the larger bubbles popped and sent drops of the potion flying out of the test tube, one of them landing on his hand.

"You okay?" Steve asked, setting the test tube back in its holder.

"Ah!" Bucky hissed, grabbing a rag off the table and dashing the offending liquid away. "Crap, that burns!" A red mark the size of a penny glared up from the back of his hand, though, now that the potion was off his hand, it seemed to be doing no further damage.

"You're in Sixth Year," said Professor Kendall from the front of the class in an irritated voice. He pushed his glasses up his nose and fixed Bucky with a disapproving scowl. "I shouldn't have to tell you not to touch unidentified potions."

Bucky snarled and bit back a response about how he hadn't touched it, it had exploded after they'd put in what _he_ told them to. He just nodded instead.

"You okay?" Steve asked again.

"Yeah, it doesn't hurt anymore," Bucky said. He prodded the burned spot experimentally. It stung where the skin was still raw, but that was it. Steve kept looking at him and Bucky sighed. "I'll go see Rains during lunch, alright?" He figured if it was going to do something to him, it would have done it by now, but she could heal up the burn.

Later that afternoon, his hand back to normal, Bucky sat down with the rest of the Howling Commandos at the long table in Phillips' office where they did their planning. "Afternoon, gentlemen," Peggy greeted them. Two thick folders were in her hands. "Ready to get back to work?" She smiled as they all nodded. "How do you feel about going to South Africa?"

Bucky looked at Peggy curiously. She didn't normally ask if they wanted to go somewhere. She just told them to do it.

"You're asking 'cause of me, aren't you?" Gabe asked.

Peggy looked a little uncomfortable, but nodded. "It's not terribly likely that you'll run into many people on this mission, but it does add another layer of complications, yes. Feel free to say no, and we can send someone else. There's a thing in Poland we could have you do instead."

"Sorry, I'm lost," Dugan said. "What's wrong with Gabe?"

"Nothing's wrong with him," Peggy replied. "But, it _is_ South Africa, and they've got that whole apartheid business. It rather makes the segregation laws from the States look more like friendly suggestions."

"Oh." Everyone looked at each other as they took that in. "Well, screw that," Dugan huffed. "I say we go, and if they have a problem with it, I'm more than happy to let them know what I think of that." Bucky was inclined to agree with him. The segregation laws were dumb enough.

"I think it's up to Gabe," Steve said. He looked over at his friend. "I'm more than happy to knock out some racist teeth, but, ultimately, this affects you way more than the rest of us. If you don't want to have to mess with it, we'll go to Poland."

The rest of them nodded, and Gabe smiled. "Thanks, guys." He took a moment to consider. "You know what, let's do it. If you didn't think we were the best ones for this job, you would've just presented it to someone else to start with," he said, looking at Peggy.

"You sure?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Gabe said. He smiled at Steve. "You're not the only one who's happy to knock some teeth out if he has to."

"Alright," Peggy said. She set one of the folders down on the desk behind her. "South Africa." She pulled out and unfolded a map. "This is the Cape Province," she said, pointing to a large area on the western side of the country. She tapped it with her wand and it zoomed in. "This is the town of Springbok. Your mission's not actually there, but it's the nearest town, and, depending how long this takes you, you might need to restock supplies there. You're going somewhere over here." She pointed to the space between Springbok and the Atlantic Ocean.

"Well, that's not vague at all," Jim said.

"Can't expect me to do all the work," she replied. "You're looking for a cave. Hydra's already found it—"

"Hydra's in South Africa?" Dugan interrupted.

"South Africa is with the Allies in this war, but, like just about everywhere, they've got a Nazi Party of their own. And where there are Nazis…"

"Grindelwald and Hydra tend not to be too far behind," Steve finished.

"Exactly. Now, as best we can pin the cell there down, they seem to be in Cape Town. Thing is, though, they've been doing a lot all the way over here, searching for this cave and what's in it."

"Which is?" Bucky wondered.

"Diamonds," she replied. "You've got a lot of those in South Africa, but these aren't any old diamonds. Somewhere in this cave, likely rather deep, since no one's really found it before now, there are diamonds with magical properties."

"What do they do?" Gabe asked interestedly.

"They don't actually do much on their own," she answered. "But they increase the power of magical artifacts, and we've gotten reports that they're using them with their work with the Tesseract."

"Remind me what that is?" Monty asked. "It's come up before, I know."

"We used to think it was just a myth, but Schmidt found it," Peggy sighed, not so much irritated with Monty's question as she was with the fact that Hydra had found the thing. "It's an immensely powerful source of energy, and Schmidt's been using it to power his weapons. Those guns with the lightning coming out? That's where that power comes from. That he's got that is bad enough, but add this extra power to it?" She shook her head.

"Got it," Monty replied.

"And I'm guessing," Steve put in. "If we find this cave, Phillips wants some of these diamonds for our side?"

"He wouldn't say no to a sample," Peggy admitted. "But your primary goal is to find the place and shut them down."

They spent a while going over how exactly they would go about that. You couldn't just use magic to find the cave, or someone would have done that before now. Jim and Dugan spent a while coming up with ways to refine tracking spells, while Gabe went over communications they'd managed to intercept to see if those held any clues. Steve was reading up on the Tesseract. Bucky and Jacques were going over the map, studying the terrain with Monty, who pointed out that they had a good chance of running into some subterranean magical creatures, most of whom were, of course, dangerous.

The morning of the mission, it took a couple of hops to apparate all the way down to the southern end of Africa, but they finally landed in a brushy, open area. Orangish sand spread out around them, dotted with dark-colored rocks and bright green scrub. They started walking toward the grassy mounds that rolled up gently out of the ground, rising up into hills and taller, rockier mountains beyond. As they got closer to the mountains, the bright sand gave way to yellow grass swaying around their knees. A cluster of thin, thorny trees huddled at the base of the hills, and they stopped to enjoy the shade and get some water before continuing their hike. Little black and yellow birds darted around in the trees above them, dodging the long white thorns and building nests that appeared to be hanging upside down. Bucky wondered idly how the eggs didn't fall out.

They were following Dugan and Jim. They'd come armed with a combination of tracking spells and that little compass thing that helped them find magical activity. Gabe had provided some likely coordinates from his reading, so they had a general direction. It was still a lot of what felt like fairly aimless walking, though. At least the scenery was pretty. They all stopped and stared in amazement as they rounded an outcropping and startled a herd of little red and white deer that went bouncing away down the side of the hill, a couple of them jumping high enough that Steve could look up at them.

"What were those?" Steve wondered.

"Springboks, I think," Monty said. Bucky looked over at him and chuckled. He was carrying an actual guidebook with little pictures of animals in it. "It means 'jumping deer'."

"Well, they sure can jump," Steve agreed.

"We're not exactly on vacation here, guys," Dugan reminded them from higher up the hill.

They made it through the hills and into the rockier mountains before the light started to go. They built a fire and set up camp and a watch schedule. It got surprisingly chilly as night fell, so everyone whose turn it was to sleep huddled around Steve, who grumbled a little bit but didn't push anybody off him. The stars were gorgeous out here, and Bucky watched them for a while before falling asleep. Their groupings were unfamiliar to him, but he was able to pick out a couple of constellations they'd studied in Astronomy. He woke up a little grumpily when Gabe kicked him in the nose, but it was almost his turn for watch anyway, so he rolled out from under the pile of people and told Jacques he'd go ahead and take over.

Around noon the next day, they started finding crevices and caves in the mountains. Dugan and Jim assured them they were in the right area—there were enough signs of magical energy around to tell them that. They did have to check out each cave they came to, but the little compass thing could tell them almost immediately if there were any signs of magic. They were getting a whole lot of nothing so far.

"Guys, I think this is it," Dugan announced a few hours later.

"You sure?" Gabe asked, eyeing the opening in the rocks skeptically. It didn't look very big.

"Yeah. This flat part out here shows signs of recent apparation, and there's definitely some kind of power coming from in there," Jim said, pointing into the mouth of the cave.

"How recent was the apparation?" Steve asked.

"Not really any way to say," Dugan shrugged. "Recent enough that there could easily be somebody in there, but no way to tell for sure."

"Okay. Weapons ready and voices down," Steve told them.

It took a little work, especially for Steve and Dugan, to squeeze through the opening. Some of the gear had to be unpacked and carefully maneuvered through too. Once they were inside the cave, Bucky watched Monty repack his bag curiously. Evidently he'd gotten one of those expanding charms on his weapons bag like Jim had on his medical one. "You brought a sword?" Bucky asked, watching him pull out a blade that was way too long for that backpack.

"Brought a few," Monty replied, checking something on the sword before sliding it back in. "All kinds of monsters live underground, and I would much rather have a dragon-sword and not need it than wish I had one in the middle of a fight."

Jim looked at him wide-eyed. "You think there's dragons down here?"

"Maybe. I mean, there's not a lot of African dragons, but they do like the underground, and there could easily be something else down here. I tried to bring some swords with a range."

"Good thinking," Steve told him. "Everybody watch your step," he added. The ground sloped downward unevenly in front of them.

They set off following Dugan—not that there was but the one way to go. Eventually, the part they were in opened into a larger cavern with branching tunnels, and Dugan and Jim conferred and selected the one on the left. As they walked, their wandlight caught patches on the walls that glinted and sparkled. It looked like they had reached the start of the diamond deposits.

"These are regular diamonds," Jim said quietly, as if he knew what Bucky was thinking. "Not getting anything magic off of them. Those are going to be way further down."

The tunnels widened as they walked. The ground got a bit flatter too, and as they moved between rocky and dusty spots, they started to see some evidence of footprints. They were on the right track.

"Not that we need anything else to worry about," Monty said quietly after half an hour of walking. "But we should definitely be keeping an eye out for some kind of creature."

"What makes you say that?" Steve asked.

Monty gestured at the cave walls. "There's nothing here. There should be signs of all your normal underground creatures, like lizards or bats or snakes. I've not seen so much as a spiderweb—there aren't even bugs down here. Something's scaring off the wildlife."

"Oh, good," Bucky sighed. "It's not scaring off the Hydra guys too, is it?"

"Not likely," Dugan said. "Magic signs are getting stronger."

They continued on, more warily than before. The tunnels branched a few more times, and Steve had several of them extinguish the light from their wands—the walls were glittering with diamonds now, and the light from one wand was reflected more than enough to illuminate their path.

"Ssh!" Gabe hissed suddenly. Everyone stopped walking immediately. "You guys hear that?"

They listened. A faint clinking sound echoed through the air of the cave. "Jacques, get the light," Steve whispered. The light went out. Up ahead of them, a faint white light was still visible as the tunnel curved away from them. Looked like they'd found the mining operation.

Cautiously, wary of guards and alarm spells, they made their way forward. The tunnel they were in opened up into a vast subterranean cavern, pillars of stone rising to the dark ceiling like an ominous cathedral. The ledge in front of them sloped down to the floor of the cavern twenty feet below. The river that had cut the space inside the mountain flowed across the bottom of the cavern, wide enough that the other side vanished into the darkness. A glowing ball of white light hung suspended in the air, lighting up the floor between the wall and the river, casting sharp shadows on the floor and shining so brightly off the diamonds in the walls that Bucky squinted against the glare. Down on the floor, fifteen men moved back and forth, some carrying tools or pushing carts. At one side of the wall, an ugly, blackened gash cut across the side of the wall, looking burnt and jagged. The men were coming and going into and out of the opening, and Bucky realized it was the kind of mark made by explosives. Right on cue, a muffled explosion sounded from somewhere inside the opening. They must be going deeper to follow the vein of diamonds they were after.

Steve gestured towards the tunnel and they moved back, away from the cavern. In whispered voices, they set up a plan of attack. There was just the one entrance to the cavern, which didn't offer much in the way of surprise. "Going in with guns blazing," said Dugan with a broad grin, white teeth visible in the semi-darkness. "My favorite."

They moved back to the cavern. On the count of three, they burst out into the light. Monty and Jacques held up protective spells, shielding themselves, Dugan, Gabe and Jim as they raced down the incline. Bucky stayed up on the ledge with his rifle, and Steve, despite Bucky's protests, just jumped straight off the ledge to the ground twenty feet below. He rolled and started running as soon as he hit the ground, so apparently, he didn't break anything. Still. It was amazing how he could be so smart and yet so stupid at the same time.

Bucky took aim at the workers below, who had dropped their tools and started firing spells and bullets back at his teammates remarkably quickly. He was only able to take two of them down, though. Between the stalagmites pushing up out of the floor and other mounds and pillars of rocks, he didn't have great visibility. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder, pulled out his wand and rushed down the hill to join the fray.

Down here, he thought he could feel the presence of the diamonds Hydra was after. There was something magic humming in the air, but he didn't have any more time to devote any thought to it.

It had occurred to one of the Hydra soldiers to start blasting mounds of rocks apart with his wand, which created a lot of noise and a lot of rubble flying through the air. Bucky got hit with several pieces of rocky shrapnel, tearing gashes across his face and hands and leaving some good bruises on his shins. He grunted as something hit him in the stomach and he doubled over, the wind knocked out of him. Fortunately, whatever it was had been from far enough away that Howard's protective fabric dissipated the spell, knocking him over, but not doing whatever else its caster had intended for it to do. Knowing Gabe was covering him, he took a second to get his breath back before pushing himself to his feet.

Working together with Gabe, they felled one soldier who was coming at them, then Gabe split off to help Jacques and Bucky split off to help Steve, both of whom were looking a little overwhelmed. Bucky's back against Steve's, they moved in a slow circle, casting shields and firing spells. Steve flung his shield out, taking out one attacker with the gun on his belt while the shield ricocheted off a stalagmite, a work cart and two Hydra soldiers before flying back to his hand.

"Seriously, how the hell do you do that?" Bucky asked. Steve grinned, but said nothing, then hit the floor as Bucky yelled, "Down!" and a burst of fire shot through the air right where Steve's chest had been. Bucky sent a spell flying into the darkness it had come from, then heard a shriek and a thump that told him he'd hit something.

Steve was back on his feet—Bucky could hear what sounded like bullets pinging off the shield right behind his head, but whoever was shooting at him, Steve had it, so he focused on the guy in front of him instead. A few minutes later, the fight around them had died down and they turned towards the dwindling number of Hydra soldiers in the middle of the room.

The room went dead silent as the floor suddenly shook violently beneath them. At first, Bucky thought it was another explosion—it came from the direction of the hole the soldiers had made—but it was too strong for that. A deep, echoing roar came up from the opening and the ground shook again, everyone stumbling and trying to catch their balance. Bucky got the distinct impression that whatever was shaking the ground was moving under them, from the wall toward the river. It would seem he wasn't the only one, as everyone backed up several paces from the water.

Another roar, much louder this time, split the still air of the cavern and sent shivers running down Bucky's spine. There was an explosion of water from the dark side of the river, splashing into the light and sending a tidal wave of water across the rocky floor of the cave. Bucky's mouth dropped open in horror as the spray of water cleared, revealing the monster Monty had been worried about and that the miners had evidently dug deep enough to piss off.

It was huge. Its skin was a dark, wet, shiny black that glittered in the white light that danced off its scales. The body was a snake's, long enough that its head brushed the roof of the cavern, thick and rippling with muscles and at least thirty feet around. A giant snake would have been bad enough, but the head was what made it the stuff of nightmares. Instead of a snake's head, the vast head of an elephant sat atop its body. A short, thick horn poked up out of the middle of its skull, and long, dangerous tusks curved down around its mouth. Between the tusks sat the mouth of a snake, vast and toothy, a long red tongue flickering out between sharp, wickedly curved fangs. On its jaw below the mouth was the elephant's trunk and a second set of tusks, shorter but no less lethal than the first. It opened its mouth to roar again, slime dripping from fangs open so wide Steve could have stood up inside its mouth. Its roar shook the ground and the walls, and it flapped its massive ears, spraying water everywhere.

"What the hell is that?!" Bucky yelled as he ran towards the wall with everyone else.

"No bloody idea!" Monty shouted back. Well, that was comforting.

Everyone—remaining Hydra soldiers and Howling Commandos—was making for the incline that led up and out of the cavern. Sensing this, and moving faster than anything that big had a right to, the snake flung out one of the coils of its body, smashing their escape into a pile of rubble. "Shields!" Steve yelled, and the Howlies instinctively obeyed and cast their shield spells in front of them. Not all of the Hydra soldiers were as quick-thinking, and two of them let out shrieks that curdled Bucky's blood as the snake's massive head darted forward. One of them was gone in a snap of fangs and a spray of blood. The other was snatched up by the trunk flailing around below the mouth, tossed up to meet the teeth as soon as his companion was swallowed.

The weight of the snake slamming into the shield spells had sent the rest of them flying back into the wall. "Monty!" Steve yelled. "Any ideas?"

"Try everything!" Monty yelled back, ripping open his bag. "I've got no idea what will kill the bloody thing!"

The two remaining Hydra soldiers were firing guns at the thing. Steve, Bucky and Jacques started shooting any curses they could think of at it. Dugan tossed his Hydra-inspired gun to Gabe to fire bursts of magical lightning at it while he went for the grenades on his belt. Jim was shielding Monty while he dug for more weapons.

All they seemed to be doing so far was pissing it off. The bullets bounced harmlessly off, and Gabe had dropped the big gun when the bolts of energy came ricocheting off its scales and back in their direction. The curses and the grenades it seemed to feel, but they weren't causing any damage as far as Bucky could tell, just annoying it.

It flipped another coil over in their direction, knocking out another chunk of the wall and making everyone scatter as rocks and diamonds rained down on them. One of the Hydra soldiers did not emerge from the pile of rubble. "How much of this freaking thing is there?!" Gabe demanded. Its head was swaying up by the ceiling again, and they had yet to see its tail emerge from the water.

"Catch!" Monty yelled, and Bucky turned just in time to grab the hilt of a sword that Monty had tossed through the air. "Dugan, keep going with the grenades!" he called, tossing his bag to Jacques. "It doesn't like those. Jacques, pull whatever explosives you can find out of there and chuck 'em at the bloody thing!" Everyone else had a sword. "They've all got different properties—see if any of them work!" Monty told them.

It wasn't much of a plan, but what the hell. Bucky had never used a sword before, but they seemed pretty straightforward. The snake roared and tossed its head back as one of the grenades exploded against its chest, and they rushed forward while it was distracted. Jim's sword shattered on contact with the armor-like scales, so that one was out, but the other four seemed to have some kind of effect. Steve's cut the deepest—whether because he was strongest or because it was the right kind of sword, who could tell? But it sliced into the snake's side and made it shriek, and he just had time to pull it back out—taking a gooey chunk of flesh that sprayed dark blood with it—before its head swung down and they all scattered.

Steve did the most damage, but they'd all made it bleed, so they regrouped to try again. Jim joined Dugan and Jacques with the explosives, trying to distract the thing and aiming for the wounds the swords had made.

There was another bloodcurdling scream as its jaws snapped down on the last Hydra soldier. It swung its head at Gabe, mouth gaping, and a grenade tossed by Jacques landed in its jaw and exploded. Several of its teeth flew out in a burst of fire and blood and it howled in furious agony, thrashing its head back and forth. The sound was enough the make the cave vibrate, and Bucky wondered briefly if his ears were bleeding.

They darted in under the thrashing head to make another attack with the swords. Hacking at the already wounded bits, they all managed to take a chunk out of it this time. It screeched and lashed out with its coils, knocking over a pillar of stone and sending them all ducking for cover. The giant head came flying toward Monty, and with a quick slash of his sword, he'd taken out one of the creature's eyes. Getting that close had cost him, though, and one of the longer upper tusks stabbed him through the leg. He screamed as it lifted its head, lifting him along with it before flinging him off to the side as it shook its head in agony.

"Monty!" Steve yelled.

"On it!" Jim shouted, tossing his explosives to Dugan and running toward his friend, wand raised. He dragged him behind the nearest pile of rocks and started waving his wand frantically over the bleeding leg.

Another rolling coil lashed across the room, catching Gabe and flinging him backwards. There was no wall for him to hit—he rolled toward the river. He hit the ground hard and it took him a minute to get up, but he did.

Steve and Bucky darted forward together, hacking with their blades at the spot where Steve had taken a chunk out of it earlier. If they knew where any of this thing's organs were, they could go for its heart, but right now, hacking it in half seemed to be their only option.

They got several good whacks in before it roared, fixing its remaining eye on them and darting its head forward. The snake's body left nowhere for Bucky to jump out of the way, so he shoved Steve to the side as hard as he could and swung his sword into the thing's face. The massive jaws snapped shut right where Steve had been standing, and Bucky's sword arced through the air and sliced clean through one of the tusks. The monster howled in rage, whipping its head back and forth and catching Bucky in the midsection with its flailing trunk. He flew through the air, and he thought maybe he heard Steve yelling his name, but the world went abruptly quiet and dark for a little while as his head made contact with the wall.

It probably wasn't that long that he was out, because Steve and Gabe were still fighting the snake when he came to. A flash of light told him Dugan and Jacques were still throwing explosives, but he couldn't really hear it. It was like the volume on the world was too low, and he was picking up a bunch of static. Everything was kind of fuzzy too, and it took him a minute to find his arms. Why did he need them, again? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he needed…he needed to get up. Needed…there was a snake. Big snake. Steve needed help. " 'm comin'," he muttered, finding his hands and getting them under him.

He thought he found which way was up, and he got part of the way there before falling over again. He blinked and everything was still fuzzy and staticky, and it was tilting off to the side. The blurry snake's head shot down again, sending Steve and Gabe diving to the sides. "Comin', Steve," he said, pushing himself up again. He was leaning on the wall, but he was up, that was good. Sword. He needed his sword. Where was…

The snake shrieked again and Bucky still couldn't really hear it, but he could feel it. He looked up from his search for his sword, and for one terrible moment, time seemed to slow down. The snake's head flew down right at where Steve was standing, and sight and sound returned in gut-wrenching clarity as the echoes of the monster's jaws snapping shut resounded through the suddenly silent cave.

There was nothing there when it raised its awful head—Steve, his sword and his shield were all gone. If Bucky had remembered that he had a body, he would have been throwing up as he saw the muscles working in the creature's long throat as it swallowed. It took several seconds for him to realize that the sound he heard was the agonized howl escaping his lips. The world was going blurry again, but it was the tears pooling in his eyes, hot and salty, that obscured his vision this time. He dashed them away with his sleeve, stumbling forward.

Bucky sensed Gabe by his side, Dugan and Jacques moving forward as they converged on the monster. Jim appeared from the shadows, holding Monty's sword high. The snake looked down at them all, rearing its head back for another strike. "Do it," Bucky growled at it. He swallowed hard, tightening his grip on his weapon. "I'm comin', Stevie."

The monster opened its jaws, but stopped, mid-lunge. It made a rasping, choking sort of noise, then screeched so loud that Bucky clamped his hands over his ears, and he knew they were bleeding this time because he could feel it trickling out between his fingers. The snake was thrashing wildly back and forth, screaming and trumpeting and howling and snapping its jaws. Its muscles rippled, contracting and bulging weirdly in one spot, and then, with a sharp slicing sound and a spray of bloody gore, there was a flash of metal and the monster's howls stopped abruptly as its head and about twenty feet of neck fell away from the rest of its body, sending shudders through the ground as it landed.

The severed head convulsed on the floor, sloshing blood and ichor everywhere in its death throes, but no one paid it the slightest bit of attention. Because crawling out of the bloody, oozing hole that it had left in the snake's body was Steve. Shaking and dazed and dripping from head to toe in slime and goop and other things too disgusting to mention, but very much _alive_.

His feet hit the floor with a wet smack, and he threw out a hand to catch himself on the creature's carcass as he slipped in the growing puddle of gore. The sword he'd been holding on to dropped to the ground with a clatter along with his shield. Steve looked up, his wide eyes meeting Bucky's stunned ones, and he smiled drunkenly before they rolled back up into his head and he hit the floor.

Startled out their reverie, they all rushed forward. Bucky got there first, dropping to his knees in the puddle of slime and putting a hand to Steve's chest. It rose and fell as he breathed, unevenly, but breathing, his heart pounding rapidly beneath Bucky's hand. Bucky's breath caught in his throat, relieved tears prickling in his eyes, and he couldn't wipe them away because he'd have to let go of Steve, but he didn't care. "You're okay, Stevie," he whispered. "You're gonna be okay."

He was aware of Jim on Steve's other side, waving his wand and muttering spells. Steve jerked under Bucky's hand, and he realized it was Jim trying to move him. "Help me get him on his side, Bucky," Jim said, and Bucky wondered how many times he'd said that before he heard him. Steve's breathing was getting choppier, and as soon as they rolled him, Jim started pounding on his back. Steve coughed and twitched, and all of a sudden, whatever he'd swallowed in there came gushing out of his mouth.

"Get it out, Stevie," Bucky said, lifting his head so he didn't bang it on the ground as he convulsed with the force of his vomiting. "There you go," he soothed, reaching one hand back to pat his back.

Steve went limp when he finished, dropping his head down onto Bucky's leg and breathing normally again. Jim reappeared by his head, reaching over to undo the clasp on his helmet. Bucky's eyes widened in alarm at the skin on his face that was revealed as he pulled the helmet off, strings of slime trailing after it—it was red and irritated and raw. He'd assumed the red on the lower half of his face was from struggling to breathe and vomiting, but it looked so much worse now that his whole face was uncovered.

Jim caught his look and gave him a reassuring smile. "Burns from the acid and whatever other crap was inside that thing. It's superficial. Help me clean it off?" He handed Bucky a wet cloth, and Bucky started wiping the sticky mess from Steve's face and neck. Most of the rest of him had been protected by his uniform, and Jim was washing the snake innards from his clothes and exposed hands with buckets of water that, if Bucky had thought about it, he would have realized Jacques and Gabe were bringing over from the river.

Once Steve was clean, Jim put a hand on Bucky's arm when he protested as Dugan pulled him out of Bucky's grip and picked him up. "He's just moving him out of this crap," Jim assured him, waving a hand at the gunk on the floor. "Let me clean you off so it doesn't start burning you too, and you can go with him."

Keeping his eyes on Steve, Bucky was only vaguely aware of Jim standing him up and dumping water on him. Jim dried him off and pulled one of Bucky's arms over his shoulder and walked him over to where Dugan had laid Steve down by the wall. He sat him down against the wall, helping Bucky pull Steve's head back up to rest in his lap again. "Hey, Sarge?" Jim asked. He leaned in so that his face was blocking Bucky's view of Steve, eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Bucky? You took a pretty good knock to the head. Can you let me look at it?" Oh, yeah. He'd hit that wall pretty hard, hadn't he? "You don't have to let go of Steve," Jim told him when he didn't answer. "Just look at me for a minute, alright?"

Bucky complied, and Jim checked his eyes and his reactions and frowned, muttering as he ran his hands around the back of Bucky's head and pulled them away bloody. He disappeared for a minute and came back with a cup and something that smelled like lemons that he told Bucky to drink. "Alright, good job," he said when he was done. "Get some rest now, huh? You'll be okay in the morning, and so will Steve, and so will Monty. We did it." He patted him on the shoulder. "Dugan and Gabe and Jacques and me have watch for the night, alright? Go to sleep."

Bucky didn't want to—he wanted to keep an eye on Steve—but the pain in his head was fading away into a pleasant fuzziness, and adrenaline and terror were ebbing away and leaving a peaceful exhaustion in their wake. He leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. Maybe he couldn't keep his eyes open, but he wasn't giving up his guard duty. He rested one hand on Steve's forehead and the other on his chest, assuring himself that he was there and alive and continuing to breathe. He wasn't letting the little punk go anywhere without him.

He woke up stiff and sore, and once he blinked his eyes open, he realized that was because he'd been asleep leaning against a rock. Rocks…That's right, he was in a cave. Cave, snake…Steve! Where was Steve? He was right here, the snake didn't…he was gone, where was he?

"Hey, Buck."

Steve's voice drew Bucky's eyes up from his lap where Steve's head should have been. He was crouching in front of him, looking concerned and holding a plate. "Steve?"

"Yeah," Steve said, setting the plate down. "You okay? How's your head?"

Bucky flung his arms around Steve's neck. "You're alive," he whispered.

"Yeah," Steve replied, hugging him back. "I am."

"Are you okay?" Bucky asked, pulling back to look him over. He didn't look hurt. Even the burns were fading, thanks to whatever Jim had put on him—his skin was just faintly pink, like an old sunburn. "You, you're not…"

Steve smiled. "I'm okay. Really." That look of concern was back in his eyes. "Better than you are. How's your head?" he asked again.

Bucky just hugged him again. "I'm fine." Steve was right here in front of him, but he couldn't stop hearing the echo of snapping fangs, couldn't stop seeing the throat muscles working as the monster swallowed him down. He just needed to touch him, just to make sure. "Don't you ever do that again!"

Steve laughed and brought his arms back up to hug him back. "Trust me," he said. "I'm in no hurry to get eaten by any more snakes."

Bucky managed to laugh at that. "How did you even…" He pulled away from him again, looking him over and satisfied that he was really there. "How did you do that?"

Steve moved to sit down next to him, pulling the plate over that he'd set down. "Here," he said, holding it out and offering Bucky some of the bread and bacon piled on it. "I don't know," he admitted as they started to eat. "I just, I couldn't get out of the way in time, and the next thing I knew, I was in its mouth and going down its throat. I still had hold of the sword, and I remember thinking that if this thing was going to kill me, I was going to make it work for it. It was hard to do anything at first—my arms were pinned to my sides and I couldn't see anything. But I just started stabbing, and it got to where I couldn't breathe, and everything started going all fuzzy, but the sword was moving, so I just kept going. I guess I got out. I don't really remember that part."

"You did pass out," Bucky allowed. He swallowed down a sudden lump in his throat. "I'm glad you're alright."

Steve nudged his shoulder and smiled.

Jim came over then to look over Bucky's head. It was still kind of sore, and he was a little shaky getting to his feet, but he made it. Jim gave him another cup of the lemony-smelling potion and said he should be good to go after that. Steve kept a hand on his shoulder while he drank it.

"I was really worried about you there for a while," Steve said. "When you hit that wall and didn't get up…" He shook his head. "Are we gonna talk about that stunt you pulled, shoving me out of the way and taking the hit like that?"

Bucky grinned. "Sure. If you can honestly tell me you wouldn't've done exactly the same thing, then, yeah. Lay it on me." Steve glared, but had no response, as Bucky had known he wouldn't.

"How about, we both try to be more careful?" Steve suggested after a minute.

Bucky nodded, his smile softening. "Deal."

"Hey, Cap?" Gabe called. "How much of this stuff do you think Phillips wants?"

They turned to where Gabe was pointing to a cart full of the diamonds Hydra had been digging up. Steve sighed. "I don't know. Grab a couple of the big ones."

"What's up?" Bucky asked, catching Steve's tone.

Steve shrugged. "All these…magical power sources and whatever. These diamonds, the Tesseract…They're just energy, you could do anything with 'em, but you know all anybody wants to do is build more weapons."

Bucky nodded. "Yeah."

Steve shook his head. "I know there's a war on and all, but…" He sighed again.

"Don't need any more ways for people to get hurt," Bucky finished for him. Steve nodded. Bucky clapped him on the shoulder. "So, we'll just take him a few. Maybe that'll keep him happy."

"Until he decides to send us back here for more."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Monty said, coming up behind them. He still had a slight limp, but was looking very much better. "With things like that down here," he said, nodding at the pieces of the snake. "Another expedition would be ill-advised."

"Things?" Bucky repeated. "There's more of them?"

"Probably. Not in the immediate vicinity, obviously, or they would have shown up by now. But I think it's safe to say digging any deeper is a bad idea."

"I'll make sure to put that in the report," Steve replied. "How's the way out coming?"

"Just about done," Dugan called from the other side of a pile of rocks. He and Jacques were levitating pieces of rubble—and evidently had been for some time, as something resembling a staircase had formed under the tunnel leading out.

They packed up their gear and made their way carefully back up into the tunnel. Jacques stayed at the bottom until they were all up, using a spell to hold the stones together. Jim took over from up top when it was Jacques' turn to ascend, and they'd only made it part of the way down the tunnel when they heard the pile of stones fall back down to the floor.

The walk out was faster than the walk in, and they reached the mouth of the cave and squeezed back out again. The sun was halfway up the sky, glinting off the orange sand far below them. The tall yellow grass rippled like a lake under the morning breeze.

"So, I was thinking," Dugan said conversationally. "We've got a couple of bombs left. We wanna make sure Hydra can't get at any more of this stuff…" He trailed off, looking back significantly at the mouth of the cave.

Steve laughed. "You know what? That's not a bad idea."

Dugan beamed like Christmas had come early. He, Jacques and Monty went back in and set the remaining explosives along the tunnel and around the entrance. They apparated a couple of peaks over before Monty set it off. Clouds of dust rose into the air, accompanied by the rumble of falling rocks.

"That oughta do it," Jim said.

"Ready to go, guys?" Steve asked.

"Hell, yeah," Bucky agreed.

They apparated back along the way they'd come when the mission started, finally arriving in Hogsmeade and starting the walk up the hill to school. "So," Jim started. "We missed Friday classes. You think Kendall's going to give us an extension on that potion distillation thing?"

"I'm having a hard time caring about that right now," Bucky replied. "All I care about right now is sleeping on something that's not a rock, getting lunch, and making sure Steve takes a shower."

"Excuse me?" Steve asked.

"Giant snake guts is not a good smell, man," Bucky said. Although, as long as Steve was alive to stink like this, it wasn't that bad.

"I'm glad someone else brought that up," Gabe said. "I wasn't gonna say anything, but, dude!"

"I've been trying not to gag the whole walk up," Jim put in.

"Get upwind of him," Monty suggested. "It helps a little."

"Alright, alright, message received," Steve said, raising his hands.

"I will give you ten dollars if you go and give your report to Phillips before you shower," Dugan said.

Steve grinned. "You're on."

Bucky laughed. This was going to be good.

(Steve almost made it to the point in his report where the snake showed up before Phillips cracked and demanded to know why in the hell he smelled like something that died in a sewer. Steve won his ten dollars, Peggy refused to go anywhere near him until he showered twice, and Monty informed them all the next day that he'd looked the monster up and discovered it was called a Grootslang, which translated into 'big snake'. Understatement of the century.)

* * *

_Much like the Nuckelavee, the Grootslang is not a creature I made up. I would encourage you to go look up the illustration on Wikipedia, because I tried, but I don't know if my description did the thing justice. I knew I had to use it as soon as I found it, but I stared at the picture for a while in fascinated horror._

_For those of you familiar with South African geography, the boys were in the Karoo for this one._

_Hope you enjoyed it! I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story so far. See you Friday!_


	51. Improper Maintenance of a Vehicle

_Alright, time to see Steve put those driving lessons of his to good use.  
_

* * *

The incident with the Grootslang took on legendary status very quickly, and Steve—for the most part—laughed it off along with everyone else. It _was_ fun, watching people's eyes get bigger and bigger as the story went on. But the more the story got told, the more time he had to think about it, and the more time he had to think about it, the more it really freaked him out. He hadn't had time to think about how it felt when it was happening. How hot and wet and dark it was. How everything he touched was slick and sticky and it burned. How the throat muscles undulated against him, rolling away and then constricting him again, pinning his limbs together and forcing him downwards. How it felt to realize that the air was going, to feel his brain start to shut down even as it railed at his sluggish limbs to keep fighting. How absolutely terrifying it was.

More than once, he woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and fighting his way out of a tangle of blankets, heart pounding and gasping for air. More than once, Bucky came over and untangled him, the hand he placed on Steve's shoulder cool and solid and a reminder of where he really was. Bucky didn't like it when people told the snake story either. Steve remembered waking up in the cave with his head on Bucky's lap and the desperate way Bucky's fingers had been clenched in the front of Steve's uniform, even in his sleep, and the haunted way he kept staring at him for a long time afterwards. Steve wondered if that's what he had looked like after he found Bucky in Italy last year. Both of them were glad when people got tired of the snake story and moved on.

Steve was glad that they didn't have any missions for a couple of weeks. Everything being normal for a little while helped him get his feet back under him again.

Steve could have sworn that school was easier now than it had been last year. Maybe it was just that the pressure of the O.W.L.'s was gone. It was a relief that nobody was talking about N.E.W.T.'s yet. He didn't really know what he wanted to do after school. Phillips had said something about them all being on a good track to becoming Aurors if they wanted, and that was kind of cool. He could see himself fighting dark wizards and saving people and making a difference in the world. He'd always wanted to do something big and important like that. But he could also see himself going back to Brooklyn when the war was over. Taking a couple of classes at a college or something, maybe with his art. Getting a job and living in his old neighborhood, helping people there like his ma had—he'd learned from her that making a difference didn't just mean fighting a war. He could find a little place of his own. Maybe…(he always felt his cheeks going warm when he thought about this part)…Maybe he could share it with Peggy. They could have a nice, quiet life, maybe even with a family, and Bucky could live right up the street and they could all get old together without anybody shooting at them. That sounded…Well, that sounded really nice.

Still, the future was a long way off, and, as Bucky's ma had reminded them over the vacation, they didn't have to decide anything now. He could focus on his classes and pulling up his Transfiguration grade a little. He had not done particularly well on his last test.

"How's the intelligence work coming?" he asked Peggy. Just because his team hadn't been on a mission in a couple of weeks didn't mean she wasn't still working. He was often impressed with her ability to juggle S.S.R. work and mission prep while maintaining straight A's.

She sighed and pulled up a tuft of grass. They were sitting under a tree out on the grounds, enjoying the last of the warm weather. "We've been hitting some roadblocks lately," she said.

"With tracking down Schmidt?"

"With everything." She sighed again. "It's all slowed down. Schmidt remains as elusive as ever—that's hardly surprising, since he flits around from factory to factory, and we still don't know where the big one with the Valkyrie is. But beyond that…" She shook her head. "The teams we send out are running into more trouble than they should. Running into bigger numbers than they should be in the field, dates and times being off…Not all the time, but enough that it's making me wonder."

"Wonder what?" Steve asked.

"Well, I, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to wonder if we haven't got a leak somewhere along the line."

"You think there's a spy in the S.S.R.?"

Peggy shrugged. "It's not outside the realm of possibilities. We've got spies in their ranks, why shouldn't they have them in ours?"

"Fair point."

"Thing is, whoever this is, they're being really careful. There's no proof anywhere that we're being deliberately sabotaged. We've just been getting more bad intel than we usually do, and we can't have gotten that sloppy that quickly."

Steve nodded. "There's something more that's eating you, though," he said, looking down to where she leaned against his shoulder. "What's up?"

For a long moment, she didn't say anything. "It's what happened with Damaris," Peggy said at last. Steve nodded again. He knew that Peggy had taken her death last term really hard. "I've been going over it and over it, and, Steve, it's what happened to her that makes me think we've got a spy." She paused. "Maybe even someone at Hogwarts."

Steve didn't see how those pieces connected, but Peggy was good at finding links that others didn't. "Walk me through it," he said.

She shifted, leaning in a little closer to him. "For two years, Damaris was feeding us information while living in a house with a top-ranking Hydra officer who was a Legilimans. If _anyone_ was going to be found out, it should have been her, but she never was. She was good. But then we show up, and the next thing we know, her cover's been blown and she's dead."

Steve looked down at her. "You're not saying…"

"No," she said, shaking her head quickly. "I'm not saying it was someone on our team. I'd trust all of you with, well, with anything. No, I think it has something to do with what we brought back. Or, rather, what _I_ brought back."

"What do you mean?"

"Phillips and I were the only ones who knew her name before. Other people just knew we had a spy in a Hydra household in Germany, which is safely vague enough. And if I'd gotten out of the house on time with the documents, it would have stayed that way. But I didn't get out. I spent the night in a trunk listening to Sauer and Zola and whoever the hell that other person was, and my memories of that were copied and passed around and analyzed. And I think somewhere along that analyzing chain was someone who passed along to Sauer that there was a spy in his house. Someone who didn't get first look at the intel—that's why they didn't go after her right away. As careful as Damaris was, that was the only way she could have gotten caught."

Steve hated to admit it, but her logic was sound. "That doesn't make it your fault, though," he said. Even though she hadn't said it, he could read it in her words.

"I never said it was," she replied a little huffily.

"No, but you were thinking it," he said.

She didn't say anything for a minute. "They were _my_ memories, Steve. If I hadn't been there…"

"If you hadn't been there, Phillips' op in Munich would have been a fiasco, and a lot of people would have died," he pointed out gently. The information Damaris had given them had saved a lot of lives and led to the capture of some prominent enemy agents. "We needed that intel. You had no way of knowing someone was going to use it the way they did."

"I know," she sighed. "And if someone else had gone in, then it would have been their memories getting analyzed and the same thing would have happened. But it wasn't someone else. It was me. I can't just brush that aside and say it's the sort of thing that happens in a war."

"Don't," Steve told her. "Use it. It's just one puzzle piece, but use it to do what you do best and find the rest of 'em. Build the bigger picture and nail this guy to the wall."

"I'm trying," she said softly.

He leaned in and kissed the side of her head. "You'll get it," he assured her.

She smiled and kissed him back. "Thanks."

Later, he shared her suspicions with Bucky, who agreed that it fit together awfully well. There wasn't much else they could do about it, not knowing who they could trust, but they were more cautious how they talked when they were around S.S.R. staff and they looked around more carefully. Since he and Steve were in charge of the team, they were the ones who did all the final reporting, and from now on that was going to Peggy and no one else. She could decide what needed to go where after that, keeping track of who saw what. She would get this put together.

When they did get another mission, it was another joint factory destruction/extraction with the 89th and 107th. They were getting used to these by now, although a few things were different this time around. Both teams were a little bit smaller—Seventh-Year students had graduated, and it was decided that they wouldn't be replaced with new Fifth-Year volunteers for combat missions until the new guys had a _lot_ more training. The most significant change was that the 89th's leader, Alistair, had graduated. (He'd wanted to continue the fight, however, and had joined up with a wizard RAF team out of Swansea.) With Alistair gone, Ethan, as his second in command, had stepped into the leadership role.

Steve knew his and his team's bad blood with Ethan was rooted in the past, and over the past year, Steve really had seen a change in the bully who'd given him hell for the first four years of school. He was good at his job, he was professional in the field, and he did really seem to be a better person than he used to. Steve hadn't seen or heard about him bullying anyone all year. Still. Four years of hell didn't go away overnight, and Steve was trying to be forgiving, he really was, but that little shiver of aversion at the sound of his voice was instinct at this point. He'd swallow it down and remind himself not to dismiss Ethan's ideas out of hand just because they were Ethan's, and when there was a job to get done, they worked together pretty well. Anything outside of work, though, and things tended to get uncomfortable quickly. Neither of them seemed sure what to do with the other one. They weren't ever going to be friends, but they weren't enemies anymore, and that was more than Steve had ever thought would happen.

Donovan had been fairly quiet during their planning session. Steve pulled him aside afterwards, and it didn't take much coaxing for him to reveal that this was his team's first op since Arthur died.

"I just, I don't know…" he sighed.

Steve clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Yeah." He got it. "You want to sit this one out?"

"Pardon?" Donovan asked.

"If you're not ready for this, you can hang back." It wouldn't do Donovan any good to force him into a fight he wasn't ready for. (And it wouldn't do his team any good either if their leader wasn't on top of his game.) "Nobody would have a problem with that," Steve assured him. "Colin was in the briefing, he can take over for this one."

Donovan was quiet for a minute, considering. "Thanks, Steve," he said at last. "But I think…I need to do this. If I don't go back in now, I never will." He drew in a deep breath. "Arthur deserves better than that. I can do this."

"Yeah, you can," Steve replied. He squeezed his shoulder. "You need help, you let me know, alright? But you've got this."

Donovan nodded and smiled and moved back to confer with Colin. "Donovan alright?" Bucky asked as Steve moved back over to where he was sitting.

"He's good," Steve confirmed.

Steve was thoughtful as they packed up for the mission—even before Donovan had said anything, Steve had been thinking about the fact that this was the first joint op since Arthur died. The Howling Commandos had had a mission, true, but that felt different, somehow. A different category. And sure, it was just semantics when you got down to it like that, but there it was. In any case, he was kind of nervous about this one too. He just…He'd just need to keep a closer eye on everyone.

They were in Belgium for this one. It was a smaller factory, so they didn't think the smaller team sizes would be a problem. Everyone was heavily armed, though. Between the surprise at the last factory, and Peggy's suspicions about spies and faulty intel, it was better to be safe than sorry. Howard had gleefully supplied them with all his newest toys, most of which exploded. One of the new guns shot tongues of fire. (Howard had also repainted Steve's shield for him. The vibranium had been unharmed by his journey into the Grootslang, but all the acidic internal fluids had done a number on the paint. Steve had considered just leaving it silver, but his team had talked him into putting it back—even Bucky. And, he had to admit, the whole 'America' theme was growing on him.)

It turned out to be a good idea to have brought the extra firepower. Jacques and the rest of the guys doing recon reported back that there were more guards than they'd expected. They'd also counted a couple of Dementors roaming the grounds. Steve couldn't help wondering if they'd been expecting company. "We haven't seen Dementors in a while," he said to Bucky.

"Special welcoming committee," Bucky replied, raising a significant eyebrow. He was wondering too.

They set up their usual attack formation, hoping they could get through the barrier before losing the element of surprise. Thus far, luck seemed to be on their side—no alarm spells were tripped, and they were far enough out not to draw Dementor attention. "Everybody in position?" Steve whispered into his radio.

"107th ready, Captain," Donovan replied.

"89th is good to go," Ethan said.

"Alright," Steve said. "Everybody keep their eyes open. Stay on your toes and watch each other's backs. Move out."

Things got very loud very quickly after that. Steve had a moment to think that they probably knew they were coming—maybe not exactly when, but the reaction was too quick to be anything else. Fortunately, they were going in Dugan's favorite way—guns blazing. The night was ablaze with fire and magic, snaps and bangs and explosions whistling through the air. Steve had his shield up and offensive spells going, but was so busy trying to make sure he could see everyone else that his mind was only half on his part of the fight. He snapped back into it abruptly when something hard hit him in the back and sent him to the ground. He stopped midway through the roll to attack whatever it was when Bucky yelled, "I _said_ GET DOWN!" from on top of him. He stayed where he was and let Bucky take care of whatever was shooting over their heads, hopping back up when he felt the tap on his shoulder letting him know it was clear.

"Head in the game, Steve!" Bucky snapped as they started running again, and Steve could tell there would be more where that came from later when they had time.

"Right," he nodded. Bucky was right. Worrying wasn't going to get him anywhere. He trusted his team, and they came in prepared for a harder fight. They could do this. And he had to stay focused if _he_ was going to do this.

They fought their way through a knot of soldiers, and just as they made it clear, the ground exploded a few feet to their left. Steve's reflexes had allowed him to pick up the whistle in the air and clock the grenade a second before it hit, just giving him time to snap his shield onto the clasp on his back, grab Bucky and turn, shielding them both from the worst of the shrapnel as they flew through the air.

They landed hard on the dirt, Steve on top of Bucky, and his groan told him that Steve's weight had knocked the wind out of him, but Steve didn't see any blood. Most of whatever had hit them had rebounded harmlessly off the shield, though it probably scratched up Howard's nice new paint job. Steve had felt a few larger pieces thud into his legs and arms, and there was a sharp pain in his left calf, but he couldn't see anything under all the dirt and he could move it, so maybe he'd just pulled something. He'd worry about it later.

"Bucky!" he said, rolling off his friend and grabbing his shoulder. His head was pounding, but the ache faded, his vision clearing as he sat up.

Bucky coughed and raised one hand in a thumbs-up, letting him know he was alright. Steve started to get to his feet, ready to scan for threats until Bucky got his breath back and they could move again, when he felt a chill like someone had poured ice water down his spine.

"Steve," Bucky croaked, and Steve knew what warning he was trying to give him—a Dementor was here. Steve could see it, its ragged, billowing cloak illuminated by a nearby stack of burning tires. It was huge, and it was getting closer, bringing what felt like all the ice and misery in the world right along with it. He'd lost his wand in the explosion, and he scrabbled on the ground for it, for Bucky's wand, for any wand. He couldn't find it, and it was getting colder and colder. "Steve?" Bucky whispered, and he sounded scared this time, and Steve just needed a wand, why couldn't he find it, where the hell was it?! He couldn't find it. He was never going to find it. He was going to die right here in the dirt in a Hydra factory in Belgium, and then Bucky was going to die too because Steve couldn't protect him. Bucky and everyone else, and the roar of battle around them got quieter, but there was plenty of screaming going on in Steve's head. There was Arthur, his sightless, frightened eyes staring up into the sky, a bloody hole across his torso. There was Bucky, shaking and pale and crying and lost on a metal table in a dark lab. Peggy bleeding and tied to a bed. Gabe in a bloody heap on the floor. Erskine with bullet holes in his chest. His ma coughing up blood and fading away. Everyone was hurt, everyone was dying, and it was all because of Steve. They all got hurt around him, he couldn't keep anyone safe, and they were all going to die right here and so was he. He was going to fail. He couldn't protect anybody.

The Dementor reached out a hand, gray and slimy and dead-looking, and all Steve could do was watch, the weight of his failure pressing him into the dirt and holding him in place. "Oh, no, you don't," came a voice, angry and determined and familiar. Probably just someone else who was going to die on Steve's watch.

"I'm sorry, Bucky," Steve whispered, rolling as best as he could in front of his friend. Maybe he could at least shield him for a little while. Maybe the Dementor would be satisfied with him.

"Here, now, Captain, it's alright," the voice said warmly, and a soft, silvery light started pushing away the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision. "It's alright. I've got you."

Warmth surged through Steve's chest, and he looked away from the Dementor and down at the light. A little silver fox was sitting in his lap. It was barely the size of Steve's forearm, but the Dementor was hovering a few feet further back now, halted in its advances. The little fox snapped its teeth at the creature, then ran a loop around Steve's midsection, hopped behind him and nuzzled Bucky's face, then bounced back up to sit on Steve's knee. It nodded its incandescent head to a pile of dirt in front of Steve, where he could see the end of his wand poking out. Steve reached for it and the fox hopped down, snarling at the Dementor before returning its attention to Bucky, prodding him with its nose until he sat up.

"That's the way," the voice encouraged, and Steve looked up to see Donovan, wand glowing and his little fox Patronus standing between where he and Bucky sat and the Dementor. Donovan pointed his wand back at the Dementor, and the fox bared its teeth and moved toward it. "Go on, then," Donovan ordered the monster. "Get the hell out of here." The little fox barked and lunged, and Steve couldn't help a surprised bark of laughter as the massive Dark creature fled from its miniscule pursuer.

"You two alright?" Donovan asked, moving over to offer a hand.

"Yeah," Steve said, taking the hand and pulling himself up. Donovan extended his other hand and pulled Bucky back up beside him. The fight was still going strong in the yard, but the presence of the Dementor seemed to have kept their area clear. He looked down gratefully at Donovan. "Thank you."

Donovan smiled. "Hydra's not getting anyone else if I have anything to say about it." He clapped Steve on the shoulder. "Now, go and do your part of the job so we can get the hell out of here."

Steve grinned and saluted. "Aye, aye." Donovan smiled and returned to the fight. Steve turned to Bucky. "You good?"

Bucky nodded. "I hate those things. Let's go."

They hurried on toward the factory doors, dueling another knot of soldiers before they made it. There really _were_ a lot of them out here tonight. Inside, they caught up with the rest of the Howling Commandos and the 89th. Everyone else had been fighting their way in too, so their little diversion with the Dementor hadn't cost them too much time. The layout of this factory was different to the others, and the door they'd come in meant they had to go through the prison wing to get to the work floor. Ethan posted a couple of his guys at the door they'd come through while the rest of them got to work unlocking cages. Steve and his team made their way on through, weaving their way between the cells.

"Hey," said one of the guys in cages they passed. His eyes travelled from Steve's shield to the star on his chest. "You're Captain America, aren't you?"

"Uh," Steve replied, taken by surprise. "Yeah."

The guy grinned, nudging his cell mate next to him. "I told you!"

"Who the hell is Captain America?" asked someone from further in the cell.

The guy the first one had nudged scoffed. "Seriously, Jarrell, when was the last time you read a newspaper?"

"He's a freaking Nazi-pulverizing machine is who he is," the first guy elaborated. "You're here to get us out, right?" he asked, looking back up at Steve.

Steve hesitated for a moment, but it would take too long to explain that, no, _he_ wasn't going to let them out, but if they would just hang tight, someone was coming with a key, and…He nodded. "Yeah." He pulled the shield off his back, slipped the straps over his arm, and slammed it down into the lock. It snapped open with a sharp crack and a burst of sparks, and the door swung open.

"Whoa," breathed the guy who'd asked who he was.

Steve smiled. "You guys head over that way, alright?" He pointed back to where the 89th's new second in command, Michael, was organizing the people Ethan was letting out. "Tall guy with the radio. They'll get you going. We've got to head this way and blow some stuff up," he finished, nodding towards the factory floor.

"Aye, aye, Captain," the second guy replied, grinning broadly and saluting.

"You know," Steve heard the first one say as he and Bucky started moving again. "He looks younger than I would have thought."

"Just so you're aware," Bucky told him as they headed down the hallway. "I'm going to be referring to you as a freaking Nazi-pulverizing machine more often from here on out."

"Noted," Steve replied, pulling his shield up in front of him as they got nearer to the work floor.

"You're like a real celebrity now. People recognizing you from the newspaper and everything. You've got the costume and the shield they can recognize, the superhero name…You should have a theme song," Bucky added, his own wand and gun at the ready.

"Maybe later," Steve said absently. "You ready?"

"Good to go, Captain."

Steve's shield hurtling through the air announced their presence on the factory floor. It clanged off of several pieces of machinery, leaving trails of sparks in its wake, changing direction with each Hydra helmet it bounced off of before returning to Steve's hand. Bucky just shook his head and hit the guy closest to him with a curse and punch, and Steve smiled as he pulled out his own wand. Bucky had asked him how he flung the thing around like that without breaking every bone in his hand (like _he'd_ done), and the truth was, Steve _had_ broken his hand a few times before he figured out to catch it right. The force with which it slammed back into his hand still hurt too, but he'd gotten used to it by now. The momentary pain was well worth how effective it was.

They cursed and hexed and punched their way across the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve could see Dugan and Monty running around and placing explosives, and he'd spotted Gabe and Jacques up in the booth collecting intel. Steve's left leg was starting to give him some trouble, but Bucky had noticed and was covering his left side. Steve just kept most of his weight on his right foot and kept going. There was something incredibly satisfying about the noise a Hydra soldier's helmet made as it hit his shield and then the floor.

His radio started squawking at his shoulder, but he couldn't hear it above all the noise. "Repeat last dispatch!" he yelled into it, flinging his shield out in a tight little spin that caught three guards coming up the narrow row of machinery behind him.

The radio squawked again and Jim came running down the row Steve had just cleared. "Schmidt's coming!" he panted. He bent double, hands on his knees as he gasped for breath, having evidently run down all three flights of stairs. "Gabe…radio…incoming…" he wheezed, pointing back up at the booth. "On his way!"

Steve's stomach twisted into a knot. He grabbed for his radio and Bucky stepped in front of him with a shield spell. "Everybody out!" Steve yelled into the radio. "Schmidt's coming, we need to get out of there! Ethan, what's the prisoner status?"

"Out of the building, sir, but not out of the yard. Most of them aren't in shape to move very fast."

Steve cursed and instinctively ducked down as something exploded against Bucky's shield. "Are there vehicles out there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get 'em in trucks, cars, whatever you can find out there, and get 'em the hell off the property. Just as far as you can go. We can regroup when we're at a safe distance. Monty, we ready to light it up?"

"Say the word, Captain."

"Two minutes. You hear that, Ethan? Donovan? Two minutes."

"We'll be clear by then," Ethan replied.

"Us too," Donovan said.

"Fall back, guys!" Steve called, standing up and rejoining the fight. "We've got two minutes!" Bucky and Jim nodded, and Gabe and Jacques were back down on the floor fighting with them. Unfortunately, the flood of guards seemed to be never-ending. At this rate, they were never going to make it to the door in two minutes. He eyed the pile of broken machinery next to them. Sitting on top was a massive metal gear, at least as tall as Jacques, that had survived the fall to the floor intact. Steve dropped his wand back into his pocket and snapped his shield onto his back. "Run!" he yelled to his team, grabbing the lip of the cog.

It was heavy, but he yanked with both hands and it came free of the pile of rubble. He followed the momentum and swung it once in a circle, letting go as it came around again and sending it flying into the approaching soldiers. It plowed at least ten of them to the ground before slicing into another wall of machinery as it spun, bringing it down onto some of the guards and blocking the advance of the ones behind them.

"Oh, now you're just showing off," Bucky said from behind him.

"I told you to run," Steve snapped, and Bucky smirked and fell into step beside him as they ran for the exit.

The chaos in the yard outside had died down—trucks were trundling away into the night, barreling through the fences and getting the prisoners clear, and Donovan and his boys were battling back the last of the soldiers. Still, Steve kept his eyes open as they ran. Thinking they'd been clear last time had gotten them in trouble.

One of the Dementors appeared from around a corner, but Steve was ready for it this time. A great silver eagle burst out of his wand, chasing the monster away. It was joined by a massive blur of silver that looked like a bear, and Steve didn't think he'd known Dementors could scream. Looked like Bucky had been ready too.

"Truck," Bucky called, breathing hard and clapping him on the shoulder, nodding to an empty truck several yards away. Steve nodded and they started running towards it. His leg was really killing him now—he'd probably done more than just pulled something—and it was a long way to run to get out of the anti-apparation zone.

Steve heaved himself up into the driver's seat, Bucky clambering in next to him. "Headcount," Steve told him, rolling around to knock out a panel under the steering wheel and look inside. There weren't any keys, but one of the perks of Mr. Barnes's meticulous driving lessons was that Steve knew what everything in there did. He could hear Bucky checking in with the other teams over the radio while he fiddled with the wires.

Just as the engine roared to life, the air in the yard seemed to hold its breath, contracting and releasing as a wave of malevolent energy rolled out in a pulse. At the center of it stood a tall figure in a dark coat, red skull gleaming eerily in the firelight.

"Everyone's clear," Bucky whispered, eyes locked on Johann Schmidt. The transfixed horror in his eyes told Steve the skinless face wasn't new to him, but he hadn't realized until this moment that it was real, and not just the product of a drug-induced nightmare.

Steve hit the gas, racing for the fence as dark magic rolled off of Schmidt in waves. He saw flashes of green light and heard the shrieks of Hydra soldiers, beaten but left alive, as Schmidt slaughtered them all for their failure. A wave of magical energy surged through the cab of the truck, and that was all the warning he had before they started to roll. The truck flipped three times, each jolt as wheels or ceiling slammed into the ground jarring Steve's bones. It stopped upright, slamming him into the side window with the last of the momentum.

"Thank God Pop drilled that seatbelt thing in," Bucky muttered, a shaking hand reaching down to unbuckle his seatbelt, then reaching across to undo the one Steve didn't even remember having fastened. Blood was trickling down the side of his face, but, considering they'd just rolled across the yard in a truck, he looked alright. "You okay?" he asked Steve.

"Yeah," Steve nodded. Everything hurt, but, again, rolling truck. He was great. He leaned out the window—Schmidt was stalking towards them, teeth bared and wand raised. He didn't even flinch as the factory exploded into a ball of flame behind him.

"Get out of the truck," Steve said. Miraculously, it was still running, but if Schmidt pulled something like that again, their odds would be better on foot. Better, but not awesome. He had a better idea. Well, okay, a different idea. "And get ready to apparate," he told him. Now that the factory had exploded, all the protective spells had gone with it. "I have an idea."

Bucky nodded and climbed down out of the truck, a little shaky but staying on his feet. Steve slammed the door shut behind him and gunned the engine again, ignoring Bucky's cry of, "Steve, what the hell?!" He wheeled the truck around in a tight circle, heading back toward Schmidt.

He swung the truck out to the side, like he was trying to avoid hitting him, then, as Schmidt raised his wand again, Steve yanked the steering wheel into a tight curve, slammed on the brakes, and wrenched the parking brake up as high as it would go. The tires squealed as they protested the abrupt stop, and Steve grabbed the inside of the roof and swung himself feet first through the broken window in a spray of glass. He let his hands slide forward and catch on the window frame, and he yelled with the effort of hanging on, adding his weight to the momentum that was playing on the truck and pulling it back to earth in even as its wheels lifted off the ground.

The front wheels joined the rear wheels in the air as the truck flipped, and Steve waited until it was directly overhead before letting go, hitting the ground with a painful crash and rolling quickly out to the side. He heard Schmidt yell and felt a wave of heat wash over him as the truck hit the ground or Schmidt or Schmidt's shields or something and exploded. Blinking his eyes open, he saw that Schmidt had shielded himself well enough to survive that, but was dazed and bloody, crawling out from the rubble. Hands latched on to one of the straps on Steve's shoulders and he felt himself spinning away into space as Bucky apparated them to safety.

They hit the ground hard and Steve gasped as his bad leg took most of the impact. "You alright?" Bucky asked, his face dark with dirt and blood and radiating concern.

"I'll live," Steve nodded.

"Good," Bucky snapped, then smacked him none too gently across the back of the head.

"Ow!"

"What the hell was that?!" Bucky demanded. Wherever he'd apparated them to, it was far enough away to be safe, but close enough to still be able to see the glow of the burning factory, which was currently lighting up the scowl on his face.

Steve rubbed the back of his head. "It worked, didn't it? He was coming at us, man, I had to slow him down."

"You threw a truck at him, Steve. That was—okay, I'm not gonna lie, that was pretty impressive, but, what, you thought you could just jump out of a moving truck, fling it at him and walk away?"

"No," Steve replied, pulling off his helmet carefully and gingerly prodding at a bloody spot on the side of his head. "I figured it might take me a minute to figure out which way was up after jumping out of a moving truck, so that's why I told you to be ready to apparate." He smiled and patted Bucky's arm. "Knew you'd figure it out."

Bucky gaped at him, then looked away and shook his head. Steve could see him fighting a smile. "You are such a punk," he said at last. He looked back over at him. "Can you walk?"

"With help," Steve replied sheepishly. Bucky pulled him up and got under his shoulder. "Can you?" Steve asked, noticing the way Bucky was leaning into him.

"As long as you don't fall over," Bucky replied.

Leaning on each other, they checked in with the radios and made their way to where everyone was regrouping. "You know," Bucky started. "Forget what I said about the gear back in the factory. What you did with the truck—_that_ was showing off."

Steve laughed. "Too much?"

"You threw a truck at him, Steve. A _truck_. Are you aware of how insane that is?"

"I was just working with what I had," Steve protested. "Although," he allowed. "It _was_ pretty heavy."

"Was it?" Bucky asked. "I wouldn't have thought that. Trucks usually aren't known for that kind of thing."

"Shut up."

"Can you imagine the look on Pop's face when he hears this story?" Bucky asked.

Steve chuckled. "Well, you know, I think he'd be proud that I was able to hotwire the thing."

"True," Bucky agreed. "Maybe not so much with the throwing part. I don't think that falls under proper treatment of a vehicle. He might blow a blood vessel."

They made it back to the rest of the group. It took a little while to get everyone back to one spot—Steve got everyone who was still standing to work lookout as the rest of them dragged in. They were probably far enough away to be safe, but Schmidt was a wild card.

It had been a tough fight. Everyone had made it out alive, but most of the prisoners were in better shape than their liberators at this point. Ethan and the 89th got portkeys and apparation going, getting the prisoners back into Hogsmeade. While that was going on, Jim and Donovan were making their way around doing triage and patching people up. The sharp pain Steve had been feeling in his leg turned out to be a chunk of metal from the explosion that had embedded itself in the meat of his calf.

"You've really been walking on that this whole fight?" Jim asked, wiping at the blood that oozed out of the wound as he worked the piece of metal out.

"Running, mostly," Steve admitted, gritting his teeth.

"I suppose at this point I shouldn't be surprised," Jim said. "This is a mess, but once I get it out I can…ah-ha!" The piece of metal popped out with a disgusting squelching sound. The blood was really gushing out now, but a wave of Jim's wand had the flesh knitting back together. He wiped the blood away, and through the tear in his pants, Steve could see the line where it had gone back together, pink and a little tender still, but looking like an old wound. "Good to go," Jim declared, patting his leg. He handed him a little cup. "Drink that—should clear up the headache, and if your head still hurts when we hit Hogsmeade, let me know."

"Got it," Steve said, downing the liquid in one gulp. It tasted like chalk.

"I mean it," Jim said, fixing him with a stern eye. "It's only a minor concussion, but you don't mess with head injuries. You try to walk anything off, I'll sic Sarge on you."

* * *

_And so begins Steve's illustrious career of throwing moving vehicles at people. Hope you guys enjoyed!_


	52. Siren Song

_Alright, one more mission before the Christmas break! And Peggy's coming along. Yay! But first, Bucky needs to have a Big Brother Talk with Becky...  
_

* * *

The snow came early this year—by the beginning of November, there was already a thin layer of it on the ground, crisp and crunchy underfoot but too thin to make any decent snowballs. It took Bucky a week of it before it occurred to him that he was listening more intently to Steve's breathing and realizing he didn't need to do that anymore. Never mind the asthma, Steve could probably sit out in the snow in his underwear now without getting sick. Not that Bucky was advocating that.

He also realized they'd come up on a year since he and the rest of the guys had gotten captured by Hydra. It wasn't an anniversary he'd been wanting to mark, but something Gabe had said the other day made him do the math. He still didn't want to think about it too much, but he smiled a little to himself as he tugged his coat tighter around his shoulders and headed outside. A year ago, he'd thought he was going to die in some dark little hole, but here he was, finally at that 'okay' that Steve had kept promising he'd get to. Sure, he still had his bad dreams sometimes, but they weren't debilitating like they used to be. He was back on his feet, and, more than that, he was pushing back. They hadn't beaten him.

At the moment, though, he had other things on his mind. He and Steve were sitting on one of the planters in the yard with Peggy. The courtyard was mostly clear of snow, due to the First-Years and their valiant, but ultimately futile effort to have a snowball fight. Steve and Peggy were talking about something, but Bucky was keeping an eye out for his sister.

"Hey, Becky!" he called when he spotted her.

She grinned and bounced across the yard. "Hi, Jay!" she greeted. "Hi, Steve and Peggy."

They greeted her and she hopped up onto the planter next to Bucky. "What's up?" she asked.

"I've got a question for you," he said.

"I didn't do nothin'!" she replied.

Steve chuckled. "You know, you just sound guilty when you start with that."

Becky considered this, then looked back at Bucky. "What?"

"What's this I hear about you and some boy from your class?" Bucky asked. "Matthew Wallace?"

"Is he the one who falls asleep in Herbology?" Steve asked.

"He did that one time!" Becky protested.

"You know this kid?" Bucky asked Steve.

"I've heard about him."

"What do you want to know about him?" Becky asked.

"I hear the two of you are going out?" Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Becky replied nonchalantly. "So?"

"Uh uh," Bucky said. "You're not going out with him."

Becky raised an eyebrow of her own back at him. "I'm not?"

"Oh, this is going to be interesting," Peggy said. She leaned in against Steve and watched the two of them expectantly.

Bucky didn't really appreciate the audience, but there wasn't much he could do about that. "No," he told her. "You're not. You are way too young for that."

"I'm twelve," she informed him.

"That's too young," he replied.

"Um," Steve leaned in. "You were twelve when you started going out with Vicki Marlowe."

Bucky turned to look at Steve. Exactly whose side was he on?! "I did not ask for your input, _Steven_," he said coldly. Steve smirked but raised a hand in surrender and sat back.

Becky was grinning. "Oh, come on, it's not like he said anything I didn't know," she said. "You went out with Vicki when you were twelve. You even kissed her."

"You're not going around kissing boys, are you?"

"Not 'boys'," she replied. "Just…'boy'."

Peggy snorted, but appeared to be very interested in one of the buttons on her coat when Bucky turned to glare at her.

"Look, Jay," Becky continued. "If you could go out with people when you were twelve, then so can I."

"No," Bucky said. "That's not how it works."

"Then how _does_ it work?" she asked snippily.

"It…" Bucky sighed. "You're just not old enough."

"You can keep saying that," she told him. "But I'm gonna keep saying that you were my same age when you went out with Vicki."

Bucky growled in frustration. "That's different."

"How?" she pressed.

"Because…because you're my sister."

"Vicki Marlowe is someone's sister," Steve put in.

"Shut UP, Steve," Bucky snapped. "I hate you," he growled. Becky was grinning like she'd won a point.

"Jay," Becky said. "It's not Steve's fault you're not good at arguing. Why's this really bother you?"

Bucky shook his head. Yes, he'd gone out with Vicki when he was twelve, and no, he didn't really think that was too young for Becky to start going out with boys. He just, well, he hadn't realized she'd gotten old enough for that yet. He'd meant to do the whole big brother thing and sit her down and talk with her and make sure she knew what she was doing. She was his little sister. He'd kind of gotten stuck on the 'little' part.

He sighed. "It's just…Dating is complicated. There's some nice guys out there, but there's some jerks too. And I don't like the idea of some of those jerks hurting my little sister."

Expecting her to argue some more, Bucky was surprised when she smiled at him. "Jay," she told him, laying a hand on his arm. "That's nice. But I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself. I can tell the difference between a guy who's being nice because he's actually nice, and a guy who's being nice because he wants something."

"Really?"

"I'm twelve, I'm not stupid," she said a little testily.

"I know you're not," he told her. "But you're new at this, is all I'm saying." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You _are_ new at this, right?"

A mischievous grin spread across her face. "It would freak you out if I said no, wouldn't it?"

"Becky…"

"Yes, alright, I'm new at this. So?"

"So…like I said, it's tricky. And it's my job to make sure you know what you're doing." He looked down at her. "If I'd known you were interested in boys already, we were gonna go over some stuff. I had a whole spiel ready."

Becky grimaced. "That's nice and all, Jay, but that sounds kinda awkward."

"Oh, it was gonna be super awkward," he agreed. He poked her in the shoulder. "But I'm looking out for you, kid, so I was gonna do it anyway."

"Thanks, I guess. But, Jay, you don't have to sit me down and teach me anything," she told him. "You've already taught me a lot."

"Well, sure, but not about boys and stuff."

"Yes, about boys and stuff," she argued. "Look, I've been watching you and Steve my whole life. I know what a good guy looks like."

Bucky blinked in surprise, unexpectedly touched.

"And," she went on with a little smile. "I know how to thump someone pretty good if I need to." She leaned her head on his shoulder and blinked up at him in that way she knew he had trouble saying no to. "You taught me good, big brother. I can look out for myself."

Bucky smiled. "I guess you can, huh?"

"Yep." She grinned. "If it'll make you feel better, if I have to thump a boy for getting fresh, when I'm done, I can tell you so you can pound on him again."

Bucky laughed. "Yes, that would make me feel better."

"Then I'll do that," she said. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You're not gonna sneak around and check up on Matthew and scare him off, are you?"

"That _is_ my job as your big brother," Bucky replied.

"Ja-ay," she whined.

Bucky grinned. "But maybe I'll only check up on him a little bit. If you decided he was good enough to go out with, then he's probably alright."

Becky looked up at him in surprise. "That's it?"

"That's it. I'm still gonna look out for you, but I trust you," he told her. He smiled. "Guess you had to grow up some time."

She beamed and sat up a little straighter. "Yes, I did." She hopped down off the planter. "Can I go now?"

"No," he told her, and he looped an arm around her and tugged her in for a hug. "You may be growing up, but you're still my little Munchkin." He kissed the side of her head. "You'll never get too grown up for that. Now, go on, get out of here," he told her, ruffling her hair and making her scowl.

She smiled and kissed his cheek before bouncing away.

Peggy was grinning at him. "I wasn't sure where that was going when you started, but that was very sweet."

"He's a sweet guy," Steve put in.

"Yes, I am, and you were no help at all," Bucky told him.

"Wasn't trying to be," Steve replied with a shrug and a smirk.

"What do you even see in this guy, Peggy?" Bucky asked, waving a hand at Steve.

"Oh, I don't know," she said with an exaggerated shrug. "I suppose he _is_ rather handsome."

"Well, if you decide you want a guy who's sweet _and_ handsome…" he told her with a grin, gesturing at his chest.

"I'll keep you in mind," she promised.

"Hey!" Steve protested.

She laughed and kissed Steve's cheek. "Just as a backup, don't worry."

The bell rang then and they headed inside for Transfiguration, the talk turning to the project they were working on in class. There were three more classes, one hundred eighty-three pages of reading, three essays and an anatomy chart to fill out by the time the last bell of the day went. Peggy told them they'd better get a jumpstart on the homework today since there was a mission coming up this weekend.

"Whatever happened to homework extensions for combat teams?" Bucky grumbled.

"Even _with_ the extension we're gonna need all the time we can get," Steve replied. "Where's our Charms book?"

By the time the weekend rolled around, they were all ready for a break. "How sad is it that we have to go and fight dark wizards to get some relaxation from school?" Gabe complained.

"Take it up with Phillips," Jim groused, settling into his chair at the briefing table.

"I don't set the curriculum, Mr. Morita," Phillips said drily.

"No, but you _did_ set that five-page essay that's due on Monday," Bucky whispered to Jim, who snorted into his fist trying not to laugh.

"I heard that," Phillips said.

Bucky didn't like to get _too_ optimistic about their missions, since things hardly ever went the way they were planned, but he felt like he could tentatively say this one looked simple enough. It was mostly retrieval. Hydra was all about collecting powerful magical artifacts, but the trouble was that you couldn't store too many things like that without drawing attention. They knew Schmidt kept the Tesseract on him, but a lot of the other stuff was scattered around in small caches, hidden and warded to make it harder to find. But they'd found one of them.

"Oh, it would be in a cave, wouldn't it?" Steve groaned, looking at the papers Peggy was handing out. "If there are any snakes in there, I quit."

"Norway isn't really known for their giant snakes," Monty said. "They do have dragons, though."

"That's just a snake with legs," Steve argued.

"Caves are good places to hide magic," Jim said. "The further underground you go, the harder it is to detect that kind of thing. And stones and caves and old places really hold in magic better than anything topside."

"What sort of defenses are we looking at?" Dugan asked, rifling through his stack of papers. They spent a while working out a plan of attack—there was definitely going to be some combat involved, but if they timed it right, numbers should be minimal.

"Are you sure about the numbers?" Bucky heard Steve ask Peggy quietly.

"This mission hasn't gotten any farther than Phillips and me," she replied. "There's some really valuable stuff in that cave—he's not risking any leaks."

"Does he know what you're thinking about the spy?" Bucky asked, leaning in.

She shook her head. "I've made a couple of comments, and he's looking at the same numbers I am—I know he's thinking about it. You've got to remember, though, I'm at the bottom of the ladder around here. I can't just go saying things like that without proof. I need to give him concrete evidence, and right now, it's all conjecture. For this one, he's just being cautious because of how sensitive some of the material in that cave is."

Bucky nodded. In the middle of all this war business, he forgot sometimes that they were really just kids and that there was a whole army out there full of actual adults. The places where anybody listened to a bunch of sixteen-year-olds were fairly limited.

The accumulation of artifacts in this cave seemed to be mostly books. Schmidt had collected a lot of lore on the Tesseract, and they were really hoping some of it was in this cave along with the other spellbooks he'd been amassing. There were supposed to be some magical weapons too—nothing in the line of mass destruction, but swords, knives and armor. Things that gave an enhancement in one-on-one combat. Peggy had a list of what they expected to be in the cave, and she was coming along to help them sort through it.

They apparated to a gray, rocky beach somewhere in a very windswept, snowy part of Norway. It was freezing, so they set off at a brisk pace for the cave. Jacques was complaining bitterly, only his eyes visible below his hat and above his winter gear. The wind was whipping away whatever he was saying, which, going by the look on Gabe's face as he caught snatches of it, seemed to be much too rude for him to be throwing out with a girl around anyway.

It felt significantly colder when they reached the mouth of the cave and had to stand around waiting for Jim and Dugan to check it for alarms. When it was finally declared to be clear, they all rushed inside, relieved to be out of the wind. "Jacques, what are you doing?" Steve asked. Everyone else was stamping their feet and rubbing their arms in an attempt to warm back up, but Jacques had flung his arms around Steve and appeared to be hugging him tightly.

"Il fait froid!" he moaned, holding Steve tighter. "Et tu es si belle et chaude."

"The man's got a point," Gabe said, and before Steve could do anything else, the rest of the team—Bucky included—had swarmed him.

"Guys, we have a job," Steve pointed out, with a resignation that reminded Bucky of his ma after a long day.

"But it's better if we're not all freezing to death when we do it," Peggy pointed out from somewhere in the knot of people. "Besides, this has got to be warming you up too."

"Yep," Jim agreed. "It's science."

"Get off of me."

"But you're so warm and toasty," Dugan whined.

"If you don't get your mustache out of my ear right now…" Steve warned.

Monty laughed so hard at that that he started to choke, so they had to pull apart then so someone could pound him on the back. They set off into the tunnel, and this one was wide enough that they didn't have to go in single file. It was warmer in here than it was outside, though not by much, and it got a little warmer as they followed the gentle downward slope of the tunnel. No one talked much, wary of both the Hydra guards and whatever sort of creatures might be lurking around. Monty pointed out the presence of a colony of bats and a lot of spiderwebs, noting that those suggested there wasn't anything _too_ dangerous down here.

"Unless there's like a giant spider or something," Gabe said, eyeing one of the larger webs.

"With our luck, I wouldn't be surprised," Bucky replied.

Thankfully, no giant spiders seemed to be forthcoming. They did run into the Hydra guards not too long after, and, if nothing else, they could rule Phillips out as the spy, because they all seemed very surprised to have company.

The fight was over fairly quickly, though it took a while longer to scout out the connecting tunnels and make sure there were no more surprises. Injuries were minor, and Jim did his repair work while the rest of them pored over the boxes they'd found, checking them for curses and warding. The little cavern they were stored in seemed to be warded—no one could stay in there very long before whatever it was humming in the rocks made it feel like it was going to rattle their bones apart—but the boxes themselves only had standard alarm spells on them. Dugan and Jim had to keep running out of the room when the vibrations in the floor got too strong, so it took them a while to get all the alarms broken. Once that was done, the floor continued to shake, and there was still something keeping the boxes from being levitated out, so they all had to run in and grab a box and run out again, but they eventually got them all out into the tunnel.

They decided to take them back to the first cavern at the mouth of the cave—they'd have to get them there to take outside and home anyway, and the light was better there. Peggy pulled out her list and they got to cracking boxes open. Most of it did appear to be books.

"Is this stuff really going to help you find out more about the Tesseract?" Jim wondered, gingerly turning a page of an old, leather-bound volume.

"It should," Peggy said. "It's got to be connected, or Schmidt wouldn't have wanted it in the first place."

"I think this one's in Arabic," Monty said, looking at another one. "Can anyone in the S.S.R. read that?"

"Howard can," Peggy replied, checking something on her list.

"Really?" Steve asked, surprised.

"Mm-hmm," she nodded absently. "He speaks seven languages."

Steve looked at Bucky. "I didn't know that."

"You don't get a lot of call for Arabic at Hogwarts," Gabe said. "I'm guessing he learned it for work. He and his dad do business all over the world."

"Hmm," Peggy said, sounding troubled.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

She flipped back through the list, then craned her neck to look over the opened wooden crates. "Did any of these have a big golden box in them?"

"Don't think so," Bucky said, looking across them. "How big?"

"I'm not sure. Like a large shoe box?"

"Didn't see anything like that," Steve said. "I mean, we haven't opened 'em all the way, but I've only seen books and knives and other little stuff so far."

"What's in the box?" Dugan wondered.

"It's called the Cask of the Elders," Peggy said. "The idea was, when the village priest or wise man was about to die, they'd do some sort of ritual with the box, and it copied their memories. Not select ones, like you can do to look at in a Pensieve, but everything. All the magic they knew, all the legends, history…all of it. Then other people could come along and look back through it."

Steve let out a low whistle. Bucky nodded. Even if it didn't have anything on the Tesseract, the wealth of knowledge stored in something like that would be immensely valuable. "Alright. Well, there's more to this cave. We can go look for it. Peggy, you want to stay here, keep sorting?"

"Mm-hmm," she replied, not looking up from her list.

"Okay, Jim, Dugan, you guys stay here and finish checking the stuff for curses and spells. Jacques, you start organizing the stuff she's already checked for transport, and then as it gets done, you three start taking it outside and apparating it back home so we're not here all weekend. The rest of us will go check for this Cask thing and whatever else we can find, then we'll come back and help you finish."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Dugan said, tossing him a salute. Jacques looked like he wanted to protest, but then Jim pointed out that he could apparate back to Hogsmeade and warm up, and he acquiesced.

"Peggy, you got a radio?" Steve asked.

"Right here," she said, patting her pocket. "Be careful," she told them. "If they've gone to the trouble of hiding it deeper in, odds are they've got something nasty protecting it as well."

Jim tossed Gabe his medical bag in case they ran into trouble deeper in the cave, and Steve, Bucky, Gabe and Monty set off. It got dark very quickly. To keep their wands free in case of attack, they lit a couple of lanterns to take with them. (Peggy had pulled out several when she started cataloguing and offered to let them take a couple. Bucky had quit asking by this point where she got all this stuff from. She always just smiled and said she liked to be prepared.)

They passed a couple of smaller caverns that seemed to function as sleeping quarters for whoever was on guard duty and an atrociously messy kitchen. A thorough search turned up nothing in the way of a Cask of Elders or anything else that looked important. There was another room with some boxes of un-warded books, which they poked through but decided couldn't be overly important if they weren't protected. They could swing back through on the way out to grab them.

The tunnel opened up then into a large cavern, most of which was taken up by an underground lake. The water was dark, smooth except where it lapped gently against the sandy shore, and Bucky felt cold just looking at it. There was a long, stony incline between them and the water, dotted here and there with boulders. The ceiling was low enough that it caught the light of their lanterns, but the other side of the lake was dark.

"Is this the end of the caves?" Monty asked. "It looked a lot bigger on the map."

"Maybe they hid the Cask in the water?" Bucky guessed.

"Well, if they did, we're not going in after it," Steve said. The rest of them nodded. They may have had a reputation for being 'howling mad', but they weren't stupid. This place was dark, in more ways than one.

"Hang on," Gabe said. He set down his lantern and the medical bag. "Jim showed me how to do one of those spells he does…" A look of concentration crossed his face, then a little ball of light flew out of his wand. It floated down towards the water and skimmed across the top, drifting into the darkness beyond the lantern light and hovering over a ledge and what looked like an opening beyond it on the far side of the lake. It pulsed a little brighter, then went out. "So, there's magic that way," Gabe said, lowering his wand. "Probably something big enough to be the Cask. I'm not good at the little fiddly stuff like Jim. And it looks like there's dry ground over there."

"But how to get over there is the question," Bucky said. "It's not like we have a boat. And I don't know how I'd feel about getting on that water in a boat anyway."

"No," Monty agreed.

"And it doesn't look like there's a dry path anywhere around the lake," Steve said, peering intently into the darkness. It just looked dark to Bucky, but Steve's super-eyes saw things better than the rest of them did. He looked at Bucky. That water was bad news and they both knew it. "I think we should leave this one," Steve said. "We can tell Phillips it's here…" He trailed off like he was following another train of thought, then shook his head. "Sorry. Yeah, no, we'll tell Phillips it's here and he can send in some Dark Arts specialist people to deal with it."

"Oh, good," Gabe sighed. "I'm really glad we're not crossing that lake. Can we head back? This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies."

"Yeah, and the tunnel on this side of the water stops here, so there's nowhere else to go," Monty added.

They looked at Steve, who appeared not to be paying attention. "Steve?" Bucky asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah," he said, blinking back to the present. "Yeah, let's go."

"Steve, are you okay?" Bucky asked. Outside of History of Magic, it was very unlike him to zone out like this. _Especially_ on a mission.

"Yeah," Steve said. "Yeah, no, I'm fine, I just…" He trailed off again. "Do you guys hear that?" he asked, tilting his head to one side.

They all listened for a moment. Bucky didn't hear anything but the gentle lapping of the water. He looked at Gabe and Monty, who shook their heads. "Hear what?" he asked Steve.

Steve shook his head. "Nothing. Gabe's right, this place is just creeping me out. Let's go."

They turned to head back up into the main tunnel. Bucky shot a concerned look back at Steve, bringing up the rear and looking preoccupied. "Seriously, Steve, what's wrong?" he asked, lowering his voice.

Steve shook his head again. "Nothing. I don't…" He still sounded distracted. "We should go," he said slowly.

Bucky's concern went up a few notches. "Yeah. Yeah, we _are_ going, Steve. Back into the tunnel, and then we're gonna have Jim take a look at you, okay?"

Steve nodded but said nothing, his mind clearly elsewhere. Bucky's foot slipped on some loose stones, and he pulled his attention away from Steve and onto the ground in front of him for a minute. When he looked back up, Steve wasn't behind him anymore, but was walking back into the cave. "Steve?" he asked. "Steve!" he called a little louder.

Gabe and Monty turned around. "What's he doing?" Gabe asked, watching Steve's stumbling gait.

"I don't know," Bucky replied, moving after him. "Steve!" Steve did not turn. "Steve!" he said again, catching up with him. "What are you doing, man?" he asked, grabbing his arm.

"Get out of the way, Bucky," Steve said, shaking his hand off. His eyes were glazed over and about a million miles away.

"Wait, Steve, what—" Bucky started, moving in front of him.

"I said get out of the way!" Steve snapped, and the next thing Bucky knew he was sprawled out on the gravel and he was pretty sure his nose was broken.

"Steve, what the hell?!" he demanded, blood gushing over his hand as he reached up to touch his nose. Steve didn't respond, didn't even turn around, just kept walking.

"You okay?" Gabe asked him, stopping beside him and reaching down a hand to pull him up.

"Yeah," he said, looking at Steve in confusion, then looking over at Monty, whose eyes were going back and forth between Steve and the water intently. "What?"

Monty didn't respond for a moment, clearly thinking, then gasped, his eyes going wide. "Siren," he said. He nodded down at the lake, and Bucky just caught the glow of a yellow pair of eyes before they vanished, leaving barely a ripple in the water. "There's a siren in the water."

They dropped their gear and hurried after Steve, yelling his name. All three of them grabbed at him and tried to pull him back, and they were slowing him down a little but not enough. "We've got to stop him before he gets to the water!" Monty yelled.

"What do you think we're trying to do?" Gabe snapped. He ducked under an arm Steve swung back at him, then latched on to it and tried pulling him back. "This would have been a hell of a lot easier if he was still four feet tall!"

They were getting closer to the water, and though Steve was staggering, like he wasn't quite sure he wanted to be going in the direction he was, he kept pushing forward, dragging the three of them with him. Bucky's eyes kept going to the water, thinking if they could take the siren out, they could stop Steve, but he couldn't find it. It was either under the water or behind a rock. Evidently the whole 'siren song' thing was taking some poetic license… although it had to be _some_thing Steve could hear, even if the rest of them couldn't. Desperately, not sure what else to do, Bucky jumped onto Steve's back, locking his legs around his waist, and he clapped his hands over Steve's ears.

The effect was immediate. The entire party stumbled to a halt as Steve stopped walking abruptly, still a good twenty feet from the water. Monty looked up at Bucky and grinned, breathing hard. "Good idea."

"I'm a little surprised that worked," Bucky admitted.

"What's going on?" Steve asked loudly.

"Let's keep going," Monty said, gesturing back up the hill to the tunnel. Steve moved his hands up to push Bucky off and Gabe leaped in front of him, waving his hands at him to stop. Bucky leaned around a little so Steve could see it was him, and, though he looked incredibly confused, he stopped trying to push him off.

"What's going on?" he asked again.

Monty gestured for him to follow him, and they started walking back up the hill. Steve was walking unevenly again, this time because of Bucky's weight on his back, and Bucky was very conscious of how weird this was, but since they couldn't hear the siren, there was no way of knowing if it was still singing to Steve or not. He wasn't letting go until they were clear.

Monty kept urging them to pick up their pace, which Steve, still being really confused and unable to hear anything, was only kind of doing.

"Look, I get why we don't wanna hang around with that thing down there," Gabe said, panting as they hurried up the incline. "But what's the rush?" Bucky had been wondering the same thing—if they went too much faster on this uneven ground, he was worried Steve was going to lose his footing and send them both tumbling back toward the water.

"Sirens can only sing to one person at a time," Monty said, looking back to answer Gabe but not slowing down. "That's why only Steve can hear it. But if he doesn't hit the water, she's going to figure out that we've stopped him somehow, and she's going to change her tune and go after one of us."

"Got it," Gabe said. "Let's hurry."

"You guys should cover your ears," Bucky said. "Just in case."

"What about you?" Gabe asked.

"Well, I can't let go of Steve, and I can't tell him to cover mine, so, I don't know." He was hoping they'd get out of here before they had to figure it out. "Just…keep an eye on me, I guess."

They nodded and placed their hands over their own ears, and Bucky was sure Steve looked even more confused now and that they looked insanely ridiculous, but, hey, if it worked, it worked. For now, anyway.

Going up the incline was a lot slower than coming down. They were nearly to the flat part by the tunnel mouth when something warm and soft and musical flowed into Bucky's brain. He could feel his jaw going slack and his eyes sliding out of focus, his hands falling from Steve's ears as he slid down to the ground, gravel crunching under his boots. He was turning toward the water even as something in his brain thought that maybe that was a bad idea, but then he forgot why and just followed the music.

Somewhere behind him were voices—if he'd cared at all to decipher them, he would have recognized Steve demanding to know what the hell was going on, Monty alternatively explaining to him and yelling at Gabe to get Bucky's ears, and Gabe snapping that he was trying. But whatever they were saying wasn't the music, so he wasn't listening. All that mattered was that he get to the water. He couldn't say why, and he was terrified to find out, but he couldn't stop.

Something was pulling at his arm, and he shook it off, then something heavy hit him hard in the back, knocking him to the floor with a painful thump. Pain shot through his face as his broken nose collided with the rocky ground, but it was whited out by the desperation surging through his chest and he shoved himself back up to his knees—he couldn't stop; he had to get down to the water. The heavy thing on his back didn't move, though, and clarity shot through his head with the sharp slap of two hands clamping down over his ears.

Bucky swallowed hard, drawing in a deep breath. "Thanks," he told Gabe, who had slid off his back and was sitting on the ground next to him with his arms stretched over to cover his ears. He couldn't hear him panting, but he was breathing hard after running and wrestling him down. He nodded.

It took a little maneuvering for them to get to their feet without dislodging Gabe's hands. Bucky's eyes kept going to the water as they stood, looking for any sign of the siren that had been calling him. He thought that if he could put his hands up and cover his ears, Gabe could slide his out and protect his own, and then they should all be covered. Before he could say that, Gabe's hands were dropping from his ears and he was running back up the hill. He turned his head to follow Gabe, noting that he was still clear-headed as he did so, then bit back a curse and ran after him.

Steve and Monty were both stumbling towards the water, their eyes glassy and distant. "I thought they could only sing to one person at a time!" Bucky yelled, ducking under the arm Steve swung out at him and trying to get at his ears.

"I think there's two of them now," Gabe replied, wrestling Monty to the ground and taking a fist to the jaw for his trouble.

Bucky's eyes darted down to the lake, and he could just see them—two glowing pairs of yellow eyes watching them from the water. Their hair was black and weedy-looking, what skin he could see a pale, deathly green. One of them met his gaze and raised her head out of the water enough for him to see her mouth, split into a predatory smile with glistening fangs.

He could see them, but Steve was putting up too much of a fight for him to fight him _and_ the sirens right now, and, in a move no one saw coming, Monty managed to fling Gabe off of him and into Steve and Bucky, sending all three of them to the ground.

Gabe landed closer to Steve's head, so he clapped his hands over his ears, and Bucky rolled and pulled his wand out of his pocket, shooting a coil of rope at Monty, who was too far away to grab now, and tying him up. He struggled mightily, but he wasn't getting closer to the water any time soon, so Bucky aimed his wand down at the water, but the sirens had slunk behind a boulder and out of sight. Then he was dropping his wand and pushing himself clumsily to his feet as the urge to get to the water washed through his brain again.

When the lights came back on in his head, he seemed to have made it halfway down the hill, and it took him a minute to figure out what was going on. He was staring at Gabe, whose face was a foot away from his and looked as confused as he did, and he could feel a hand over his left ear and see another one wrapped around Gabe's right. They were both pressed up against something solid, and once he caught the red and white stripes out of the corner of his eye, Bucky realized it was Steve. The sirens must have started singing to him and Gabe at the same time, so Steve caught them both. He was covering one of each of their ears and pressing their other ones against his chest to block out the noise, since there were four ears and only two hands for him to work with.

"Nice work, Stevie," Bucky said, reaching up a hand to pat the arm holding onto him gratefully. Steve patted his cheek in response. For a moment, they seemed to be in the clear. Bucky was trying to figure out if he and Gabe could reach Steve's ears from the position they were currently in, but as they were reaching their hands up for Steve's face, the sirens noticed that they'd lost the two of them and switched targets again.

Steve shoved them away and started striding down the hill. Bucky was reminded (again) of his broken nose as it slammed into the back of Gabe's head while they rolled away. Steve was covering good ground, and Monty had cut himself loose with a sharp rock or wriggled out of the ropes or something and was clambering to his feet and walking with him.

Bucky grabbed the closest wand off the ground—which he thought might have been Steve's—and he made it about three feet before the music started working its way through his head again. He forgot about the danger, he forgot about the pain, he forgot about everything except for the all-consuming urge to get to the water. The need was physical, primal, more important than breathing, and he obeyed as quickly as he could.

Agony seared through him as Monty knocked him to the ground—not from the pain of colliding with the rocky floor, but because this was slowing him down, keeping him from getting to the water. He heard himself pleading, protesting, cursing, as he fought and struggled against the ropes binding him. Monty yelped and snapped out something that was probably very insulting—had Bucky bothered to understand it—when Bucky sank his teeth into his wrist, but he tied the last of the knots and jumped up to run after someone else.

Bucky came back to himself more slowly this time. The music felt thicker in his brain, and even once it was gone, he felt like he had to shake his head to dislodge it. Did it get harder to shake off the more you heard it? Once it did clear, he rolled and searched on the ground for a rock he could cut himself loose with—if they weren't singing to him, they were going after someone else who needed stopping. Fortunately, Monty had been in a hurry tying him up, and the ropes around his wrists were loose enough that he could move. He found a sharp enough rock and started sawing at the ropes, yanking his hands free and pulling the bindings from his feet.

Monty was struggling with Gabe, who was still moving towards the water. He appeared to have already gotten Steve, who was tied up on the ground by one of the boulders, but that wasn't going to hold him for very long. Bucky shot another coil of rope at him then went to help Monty. Before he got there, Monty stopped trying to restrain Gabe and the two of them continued the journey to the lake. Bucky shot a leg-locking curse at them, sending them to the ground as he kept running. They fell and hit the ground and kept crawling toward the water.

From behind him, Bucky heard the snapping of ropes, and he had a minute to feel relieved that Steve was coming to help. That relief was quickly replaced by horror when he saw the vacant look in Steve's eyes. There were three sirens now.

Gabe and Monty were still crawling towards the water, but they were moving slow enough that Bucky could focus for the moment on Steve. He tried to hit him with the same spell that he'd gotten Monty and Gabe with, but Steve had evidently found a wand of his own, and Bucky cursed his super-human reflexes as, even enchanted, he managed to block the spells Bucky was shooting at him.

"Shoulda never taught you how to do that shield spell," he muttered, running after him.

He jumped up onto Steve's back, clamping his hands over his ears again and feeling Steve stagger to a halt. The dazed look on his friend's face told Bucky he was probably right—the more you were exposed, the longer it started taking to clear your head. Steve was safe for the moment, but it would be another minute before he'd be up to helping.

Looking up, Bucky could see Gabe and Monty continuing their crawl to the water. They were picking up speed, and that leg-locking curse was going to wear off in another minute or so. He could see one of the sirens in the water, but he'd had to drop his wand to catch Steve, so he couldn't attack it. Fear churned in his gut—he didn't know how long he had until they started singing to him again—and it was followed by a wave of despair. He couldn't do this. He couldn't keep everybody safe. All he could do was slow it down, but the sirens were getting them closer and closer to the water—it was just a matter of time.

Frantically, he wracked his brains for something, for anything that would work. If they were going to have any chance of getting out of here, the sirens needed to be silenced. How could he do that? They'd read about sirens last year, how did they work, how did they work…Lightning flashed through his brain. Peggy. Sirens only sang to men. Didn't they? He was pretty sure that was right. Bucky couldn't fight the sirens and keep everyone out of the water—especially when they kept getting into his head too—but if Peggy wouldn't be affected…

Monty and Gabe were pushing themselves to their feet, so whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it now. Bucky had to pull one of his hands off of Steve's ears to get at his radio, and they must have been still singing to him, because he snapped to attention, shoved Bucky off his back and started walking again. Bucky couldn't keep his grip with the one hand, but he'd been half-expecting the move, so he landed on his feet instead of crashing to the floor. He grabbed at the radio on his shoulder.

"Peggy, get in here!" he yelled, then ran after his friends to try to slow their death march toward the lake.

* * *

_So, no giant snakes or anything, but maybe these guys should start steering clear of caves. Tune in Friday to see if Peggy makes it in time!_


	53. Tacet

_The sirens are still singing, but let's see if Peggy can change their tune.  
_

* * *

Peggy had been alone in the front cavern for several minutes now. Dugan and Jim had finished checking the boxes for curses, and had taken off with Jacques to deliver the first load to Hogwarts. Between apparating to the front gate, hiking up to school with their cargo and checking it in with Phillips, she wasn't expecting them back for at least half an hour. It had been a good idea of Steve's to get started on the transport—they were going to be doing it for a while.

She looked down at her watch. Speaking of which, where was Steve? They'd been gone for some time now. She checked her radio to make sure it was still working, then shrugged. They must still be looking around. Maybe there was more to search through than they'd thought. If she didn't hear from them by the time she got to the bottom of the box she was on, she'd call and check in.

The radio squawked suddenly and loudly at her shoulder, making her drop the knife she was inspecting. It was a little staticky, but she recognized Bucky's voice, as well as the frantic tone with which he shouted, "Peggy, get in here!"

She snatched up her wand and was on her feet and running. "Bucky, what's going on?" she asked. "Where are you?" She received no reply, so she ran faster, lighting her wand as the tunnel darkened. She would just have to keep going until she found them.

She ran past several rooms that were clearly part of the guards' quarters, but they were dark, so she passed them by. Thankfully, the tunnel did not fork, so she never had to wonder if she was going the right way. Ahead, she saw a faint light and heard distant voices, so she picked up speed. The tunnel opened up into a long, low cavern, lanterns on the floor illuminating her friends and a massive black lake at the end of a long slope. She had to slow her pace once she hit the loose stones on the floor, but she continued downwards. Steve, Monty and Gabe seemed to be walking toward the water, and Bucky was…Was he fighting them? She saw him shoot a spell at Gabe that knocked him off his feet and sent him flying several feet back. What the hell was happening?

"Bucky!" she yelled. "What's going on?"

He spun toward the sound of her voice, relief flooding his dirty, bloody face as his eyes met hers. "Sirens!" he called back. "There's sirens in the…in the…" The relief on his face melted into a glassy look of distant focus, and he turned and started walking toward the lake.

He hadn't finished his explanation, but Peggy got the message. She hurried closer to the water, noticing as she did so that Steve had stopped walking and was shaking his head, pressing a hand to his temple. Evidently, there were only three sirens, and they were taking turns calling to the four boys to work them all down to the lake. It was slow, but clearly efficient. Clever little monsters.

"Steve, are you alright?" she asked, pausing briefly as she neared him. Would he be clear-headed long enough to be of any help?

"Peggy?" he asked, bewildered. He looked like he'd just woken up. "What's…What're you doing here?"

"Bucky called me," she replied. "Where are the sirens? Are you good to help me?"

"Sirens…" he mumbled. Clarity blinked back into his eyes. "Keep hiding behind the rocks. Can't get a good shot." He cast his eyes around on the ground, looking for the wand he'd dropped somewhere.

"Right. I'm on it," she said as he bent to pick up his wand. She knew why Bucky had called her—she could get close enough to fight without getting enchanted. "Can you keep this lot back?" she asked.

"Trying," he told her, heading off after Monty, who was closer than any of the others to the dark water. He hit him with a levitating spell, and his aim was a little off but it still dragged him several yards up the embankment. He shot a coil of rope at him that bound him to a boulder, but then dropped his wand again and started following Bucky and Gabe to the lake.

Peggy skidded to a halt where the rocks turned to sand and spotted one of them, glowing yellow eyes just visible between the water and a mat of gnarled hair like black water weeds. "_Silencio_!" she yelled, jabbing her wand in its direction. Since she couldn't hear its song, she wasn't sure if that spell would work, but Bucky staggered to a halt and pressed his hands to his head with a groan. She smiled. One down.

Her eyes scanned the water for signs of the other two, acutely aware of the crunch of gravel under Steve and Gabe's boots as they got closer. "Bucky!" she shouted, snapping him out of his reverie. "Get them!"

Bucky shook his head and headed back up the slope. Wandless, he threw himself in front of Steve, who was closest to the lake, and Peggy winced as Steve started swinging and she heard something crack as his fists met his friend.

She saw another set of eyes and shot a silencing spell at it, but it ducked back down under the water and she must have missed, since no one stopped behind her. A glance back behind her showed Bucky crashing to the ground as Steve tossed him aside, but he rolled back up to his feet with someone's wand in his hand. "Sorry, Stevie," she heard him mutter before he yelled, "_Stupefy_!" and Steve flew back to the ground in a flash of red light and did not rise.

Gabe continued marching forward, and Peggy heard Bucky move to engage him as she turned back to the water. A pair of corpse-green hands with long, bony fingers latched onto one of the rocks in the water, and Peggy quickly ran to the left, bringing into view the siren they were attached to. It locked its glowing yellow eyes on her and shrieked, baring long, crooked fangs, and _that_, she heard. She made a slashing motion with her wand, and it shrieked one more time as its head, neck and one shoulder flew away from the rest of its body in a spray of black blood.

Seeing no more movement in the water, she risked another look behind her. Monty was still tied to the rock up the slope and Steve was still unconscious on the ground. Gabe was lying on his side, wrists tied to his ankles but no longer struggling. The stunned expression on his face told her the siren had just let him go and he was trying to figure out what was going on. There was no time for her to explain it, though, because the last siren, wherever it was, was singing to Bucky again and he was a _lot_ closer to the water—and farther away from her—than she'd thought.

"Bucky, stop!" she yelled, not sure why, because she knew it wouldn't do anything. Predictably, he ignored her, staggering across the wet sand. She tried shooting an immobilizing spell at him, but he either ducked or just tripped, and it went over his head. Picking up speed, she ran faster, eyes anxiously scanning the water, because she knew she wouldn't get to him in time. The last siren appeared several feet out in the water, floating at the end of a rocky outcropping. Bucky stumbled onto the rock, slipped and fell forward, landing on his hands and knees. Peggy was afraid that any spell she tried to stop him with now would knock him into the water.

There was another boulder keeping her from getting a clear shot at the siren, so she kept running, even as Bucky crawled forward, one arm stretched out and reaching for the siren's extended hand.

"_Reducto_!" she screeched as the siren came fully into view, and the monster exploded in a burst of slime and black ichor that splattered all over the ledge and Bucky and sent the smell of rotting fish rolling through the cavern. She stopped running, panting hard, while Bucky stared down at his outstretched hand in bewildered horror.

For a moment, the only sounds in the cavern were her own labored breathing and the groans of the boys lying on the ground somewhere behind her. Then, with a deafening shriek and a roar of water, the first siren—the one whose song she'd silenced but had not killed—surged up out of the lake, grabbed Bucky's wrist, and yanked him forward into the water.

"Bucky!" Peggy screamed as she rushed forward. She screamed again in surprise as she hit the water—it was bloody freezing!—but she pressed forward, splashing out in the direction he'd disappeared. The water was just up to her shoulders as she passed the rock he'd fallen off of when the ground disappeared abruptly under her feet and she dropped down under the water. She kicked and paddled back until she was standing on the drop-off again. The lake was huge, and got deeper faster than she'd thought, and if she just swam out into it, she'd never find him.

Her eyes searched the surface of the water frantically, looking for any ripple or sign of movement. It was pointless, she knew—sirens lived down in the murky depths, only surfacing to find fresh victims, and now that she had her prize, there was no need for her to reemerge. "_Accio Bucky_!" Peggy yelled desperately while her brain searched for something, _anything_ that might help.

To her great surprise, Bucky's head and shoulders broke the surface of the water about twenty feet away with a soft splash. That spell wasn't supposed to work on people, but she didn't complain, plunging forward to swim after him. (A little voice in the academic corner of her mind that she admonished to shut up because this really wasn't the time wondered if the fact that Bucky was clearly unconscious meant he counted as an inanimate object for the purposes of the spell.)

He was starting to roll on the current and sink back under the water again as she reached him. Just as her fingers clenched in the folds of his jacket, the siren appeared not three feet away, having swam back up in pursuit of her stolen prey. As soon as Bucky had hit the surface of the water, however, Peggy had expected the siren not to be far behind, and she was ready. She tugged hard on Bucky's jacket, pulling him around and behind her and putting herself between him and the siren. Her other hand pulled her wand up and pointed it at the monster, and she yelled, "_Reducto_!" as the siren surged forward.

Just like the other one, it exploded in a torrent of foul-smelling slime. Ignoring the ooze that was spattered across her face and hair, Peggy tucked her wand into her shirt, spun in the water, and looped an arm around Bucky's chest, pulling him back up from where he was starting to sink again. She started swimming towards the shore, noting not only the way that Bucky's chest failed to rise and fall with any sort of breath, but also the growing bloodstain on his jacket around his shoulder where the siren appeared to have bitten him. Both were worrying, but neither was something she could do anything about until she was on solid ground.

As she reached the shallower water, she started moving slower—Bucky, being larger than her, was heavy enough already without being weighed down by his water-logged clothes, and without the water buoying him up, he was harder to pull. Steve was back on his feet now, though, and although he still didn't look entirely steady, he was splashing out into the water to meet them, wrapping his arms around both of them and dragging them to shore.

He helped her move Bucky up past the wet sand and lay him out on the ground. Peggy's eyes went wide in alarm as Steve's sleeve caught on the torn fabric of Bucky's jacket, pulling it back and exposing the wound underneath. A large chunk of the meat of his left shoulder was missing entirely, toothmarks still visible in the torn edges of the flesh. Though it should have been bleeding profusely, it wasn't—something in the venom must work as a coagulant, keeping most of the blood inside. Peggy remembered reading that sirens liked to drink the blood out of their prey over a long period of time before eating what was left. His shoulder had turned black, not just around the bite, but all of the surrounding skin as well. The blackness stretched off down his arm and under his sleeve on the one side, and when she ripped away the thin threads that still held the jacket and shirt together at the collar, she could see where it had spread on that side as well, reaching nearly to his neck. It was spreading fast enough that she could actually _see_ it moving under his skin, creeping in thin bluish-black veins up his neck and down his chest and pulling the rest of the darkness along behind.

"What _is_ that?" Steve asked. "What happened? He—" He swallowed hard. "He's not breathing, Peggy, what—"

"I know," she cut him off. "I'll take care of that; go get the medical kit." She knew they'd brought Jim's bag with them, and while she didn't know exactly what siren venom did, it clearly wasn't good. His breathing was the more immediate concern, but once they got that sorted, they would need to do something about that bite very, _very_, quickly.

"What?" Steve asked—the lights were clearly not all back on yet, but there wasn't time to wait for him to find all the switches.

"Medical kit!" she barked, and he jumped to his feet and scrambled away up the hill.

Peggy grabbed the front of Bucky's jacket and ripped what was left of it open so his chest wouldn't be constricted by the wet material, sending buttons scattering across the sand. She leaned in and placed her head on his chest, and she was able to hear his heart beating, so at least that was _something_. Placing one hand on his forehead and one under his neck, she tilted his head back, then pinched his nose shut and tugged his mouth open. Taking a deep breath, she leaned down and placed her mouth over his, exhaling and watching his chest rise and fall. She pulled up, drew in another breath, then leaned down and repeated the process. She did it five more times, distantly aware of Steve crashing to his knees beside her as he returned. As she drew in another breath, Bucky twitched and let out a weak, watery cough.

"That's it, Bucky, come on," she breathed. "Help me get him on his side, Steve." Together, they rolled him over as he continued to cough, weakly at first, then more violently, bringing up waves of murky black lake water.

His eyes blinked open as the coughing subsided, and he was breathing normally for about three seconds before he started gasping for air. The blackness from the bite mark had reached his neck, tendrils of it climbing up his face now, and Peggy thought the poison must have reached his throat or his lungs and was keeping him from breathing. She snatched the medical bag out of Steve's lap and started rifling through it.

"Bucky?" Steve called worriedly. Bucky's back arched up as he gasped, then slammed back into the ground. The spasm kept repeating, battering his body against the rocky sand as he fought for air.

"Hold his head," Peggy told him, digging frantically through the bag. Steve pulled Bucky's head up into his lap so that at least he was slamming it into Steve's leg when he convulsed instead of into the ground. "Where is it, where is it, where is it?" she muttered, cursing the seeming unending nature of the bag. She didn't know what specifically one did for a siren bite, but surely there was some sort of anti-venom in here somewhere.

"Peggy," Steve pleaded, sounding far more like a frightened child than he probably intended to, and her heart wrenched at the fear in his voice and the panic rising in her own chest. What if she was too slow? What if she lost him, lost one of her best friends while he struggled for his life right here in front of her?

Her fingers closed around a little wooden box, and as she brought it back up and opened it, hope forced the knot of panic back down towards her stomach. "Oh, bless you, James Morita," she breathed, pulling out a shriveled brown bezoar. She looked down at Bucky, who was seizing less forcefully, gasps for air coming quieter as his eyelids started to drop.

"No, no, no, no, no," Steve was whispering, slapping Bucky's cheek, trying to get him to open his eyes. "Bucky!"

"Hold his head still," Peggy said, reaching forward. She prized Bucky's mouth open and pushed the bezoar in past his teeth. She pulled her hand away and Steve held Bucky's jaw closed, tilting his head back and massaging his throat, trying to get him to swallow.

"Come on, Buck," he whispered. "Don't clock out on me now, come on!" Bucky finally swallowed, giving one final shudder before going completely still. "Bucky?" Steve whispered fearfully.

"It's working, look," Peggy said, pointing to his neck. The tendrils of poison were moving again, not as fast as before, but still visibly retreating back down his neck. He was breathing again too, quietly and evenly, his body relaxing and sinking back against Steve's legs as the strain of fighting for his life drained away. Peggy let out a relieved huff of air, a smile flitting across her face. "He's going to be okay." A bezoar worked as an antidote for most poisons, so Peggy had been sure it would have at least some effect, but she hadn't known how much. It hadn't cured him completely—the black lines of venom had drawn back away from his neck and stopped their crawl toward his internal organs, but the sickly circle of black flesh remained stubbornly encompassing his shoulder. He'd definitely need medical treatment, but at least now he'd stay alive long enough to get it. "He'll be okay," she said again, her smile growing wider.

"He's okay," Steve breathed, running one hand over Bucky's forehead and brushing his hair, soggy with lake water and sticky with siren blood, out of his face. Steve looked back up at Peggy, his eyes watering gratefully. "Thank you." He looked around the cave, back up the incline where Monty was still tied to the rock, one of his hands working to undo the knots binding Gabe's wrists and ankles from where he had rolled over next to him. "You saved us," he said. "What…" He looked around the cave again. "What even happened?"

Even though they were out of the wet sand, it was still cold and they were soaked. Peggy picked up her wand and dried them off—Bucky first, then Steve, then herself—until steam was rising from their clothes and she could feel her feet again. She talked to Steve as she did so, going from Bucky calling her in to what had happened out in the water. He was shaking his head slowly when she finished, staring at her in awe. "Wow," he said. "That was just…You're awesome, you know that?"

"So I've been told," she replied with a smile.

He laughed, then groaned, putting a hand to his side. "Ow. Okay, that's broken."

"That's what you get for running off after other girls," she told him with a mischievous smirk.

He chuckled, still holding onto his side carefully. "I _was_ enchanted," he protested, before giving her one of those smiles that made her stomach do a little flip. "That's the only way I'd run after anyone but you." He shifted a little, keeping one hand on his side, but reaching up with the other to cup her cheek. "Thank you," he said again, leaning over slowly in deference to his broken ribs and kissing her warmly.

"Ugh, get a room," Bucky groaned from below them.

Peggy laughed and Steve jumped, hissing in pain and grabbing at his side but beaming down at his friend. "Bucky!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah," Bucky groaned again, raising his right hand to rub his eyes. He remained on the ground, but looked around the cave as best he could, then smiled up at Peggy. "Knew you'd do it. 'Atta girl."

Peggy smiled. "How are you feeling?"

"Awful," he replied simply. He looked like he was trying to move to sit up, then stopped. "Why can't I move my arm?"

"The siren bit you," Steve said. "There's some kind of poison that…" He swallowed. "Peggy stopped it, and Nurse Rains can fix it up the rest of the way, but…"

"It's venom, actually," Monty said from behind Peggy. He and Gabe had finally gotten themselves free and come down to join them. "Venom is injected, poison is ingested."

"Oh, my gosh, dude, he nearly got eaten by a siren, you think he really cares about semantics right now?" Gabe asked.

"Could not care less," Bucky confirmed.

"Sorry. Habit," Monty replied, looking a little embarrassed. "You alright?"

"I'll live," Bucky groaned. "I think." He extended his good hand to Steve. "Help me up?"

Steve carefully helped Bucky to his feet, keeping an arm around him when he started shaking once he was upright. Gabe extended a hand to pull Peggy to her feet. "I didn't see all of it, but did you seriously take all three of those things out?" he asked.

She smiled, a little embarrassed, but pleased with herself. "I did."

"Whoa," Gabe replied, clearly impressed.

Bucky sneezed then and cried out in pain, doubling over in Steve's grip. "Ow! Ow. Ow." He straightened back up very slowly. "When did I break a rib?"

"Right before you stunned Steve," Peggy told him. "He punched you. I'm surprised it's just the one, as loud as it was."

Steve's eyes went wide. "I broke his rib?"

"And his nose," Monty put in.

"Yeah, you did that too," Bucky agreed.

"Oh, my gosh, Buck, I'm so sorry!" he began.

"Considering how hard we were all whaling on each other," Gabe said, shooting a pointed look at Monty. "Let's not get into all that. Sirens suck, bygones are bygones, let's get the hell out of here."

"Sounds like a plan," Bucky agreed. Monty and Gabe nodded, then trudged up the hill to pick up wands and discarded gear. Peggy collected the scattered contents of the medical bag while Steve adjusted his grip on Bucky and started to move. "Seriously, Stevie, don't do that," Peggy heard him say quietly. She shot a glance up to see him fixing Steve with what she'd always called his worried older brother look. "All bets are off when you're enchanted, man. I'm not holding it against you."

"I hurt you, Bucky," he insisted. "I hurt all of you. I—"

"Yeah, you hurt all of us, and we all hurt you," Bucky interrupted. "You gotta get mad at us too if you're gonna be like that."

"Bucky…"

"That's how it works, Steve. If you're gonna play that game, you gotta play by the rules." Steve didn't reply and Bucky sighed. "You want me to punch you?" he asked sarcastically. "Will that make it even?"

"No, I don't want you to punch me, I—"

"Good. I don't wanna punch you anyway." He smiled warmly at him, the way Peggy had seen him smile at Rebecca when she was having a bad day. "It's okay, Stevie. Really."

"Okay," Steve said softly. He smiled. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Thank Peggy for that," Bucky said, a little more loudly. "Which, by the way," he added, nodding to where she was repacking the bag. "You should be a gentleman and help her with her stuff."

"I've got it," Peggy replied, pulling the zipper on the bag and getting back to her feet. "And I think the rules of chivalry can be bent a bit when the cost would be one's teammate face-planting into the gravel," she added.

Steve smiled at that and Bucky laughed. "Point. So, can we go now?"

It was a very, very long walk back to the mouth of the cave. Everyone was moving slowly and carefully, groaning when they moved wrong or stumbled on loose rocks. Steve and Bucky slowed down as they passed the second to last cavern from the front, and Peggy hung back to check on them. Bucky's color was draining away, and small tremors were traveling the length of his body—everywhere except his left arm, which remained motionless. "Is everything alright?" she asked.

Steve shook his head, and Bucky smiled weakly. "I don't feel so good," he said.

"I think the poison's starting to move again," Steve said, nodding at Bucky's shoulder. There were no signs of movement in the sickly-looking bluish-black under his skin, but the circle of darkened flesh did seem larger than before.

"S'venom," Bucky corrected him.

Steve gave a half-hearted chuckle at that, which Peggy knew was what Bucky had been trying for. She nodded at Steve. "The bezoar was just a holding measure," she reminded him. She raised a hand and rested it on his arm. "It'll hold him until Hogwarts," she assured him. She looked at Bucky. "You're going to be okay," she told him. "We just need to get you to the front so we can apparate you home."

Bucky nodded. "I know." His breath hitched and he grimaced. "You should probably not stand there in case I throw up on you."

"Do you want something for the pain?" she asked, not moving aside. If he _did_ throw up, well, it would hardly be the most disgusting thing she'd've gotten on her today. She pulled Jim's bag around in front of her. "Apparating is not going to be pleasant in the state you're in."

Bucky considered, and she knew his initial reaction was to refuse, but he swallowed hard and nodded minutely. "Might not be a bad idea," he conceded. He looked up at Steve. "Don't wanna throw up on you either."

Steve smiled. "I appreciate that." He lowered Bucky to sit down on a boulder while Peggy knelt and rummaged through the bag. She hadn't put anything back where it was supposed to go, but she remembered seeing what she was looking for when she'd been repacking. Hesitating a moment, her hand hovered over a vial of something bright green before she plucked out a vial of cool blue liquid instead and handed it to Steve, who uncorked it.

"It'll take a minute to kick in," she said, taking back the empty vial after Bucky drank it down.

He nodded. "Thanks." He smiled at her. "And thanks for saving our skins. I didn't tell you that yet, did I?"

"You're welcome," she replied, patting him on the knee. He smiled wider, then his eyes slid out of focus and fluttered shut, his head lolling back onto Steve's shoulder. "I gave him a sedative," she told Steve, before he could worry. She winced apologetically. "I thought it would make the trip easier on him."

Steve nodded. "Probably a good idea." He got back to his feet with a groan, lifting Bucky up into his arms to carry him. Peggy tucked his injured arm up so it wasn't dangling free, and they started walking again. (It wasn't until they were back in the infirmary later that Peggy remembered Steve's broken ribs. It must have hurt something awful, carrying Bucky that last bit, but of course, he wouldn't have said anything. Still, she should have remembered.)

They arrived at the mouth of the cave just after Jim, Jacques and Dugan had returned from dropping off cargo. Monty and Gabe were in the middle of explaining. "I'll explain," Peggy said, moving forward to lay a hand on Gabe's arm. "You four get on home and get to the infirmary."

"You need to get out of here too," Steve cut in.

"I haven't finished with the boxes yet," she pointed out. "I wasn't hurt."

"You're going to get checked out at the infirmary with the rest of us, and then you're going to change into something warm and not covered in siren guts," Steve said in his 'Captain voice' that brooked no argument. "I'm scrubbing the mission—we're all getting out of here. Phillips can send somebody back for this stuff, and then he can send someone in later to figure out how to cross the lake and find the Cask of Elders." He paused thoughtfully. "Preferably an all-female team."

Peggy could've stayed and finished her job, but after all that had happened, she was more than happy to go home and have a bath and go to bed. They made their way back out onto the beach and into the freezing wind, apparating back to what felt, at this point, like the tropical weather of Scotland in November. Bucky was given an antidote straight away and cleaned up and given a bed, and Peggy did wonder why exactly Nurse Rains had siren anti-venom so ready at hand. The black color had vanished entirely from his shoulder by the time the rest of them were checked over and treated, though the bite wound itself would take longer to heal. Steve, Gabe and Monty were ordered to bed so they could be monitored for the rest of the day before being released, and it was a sign of how worn down they were that there was very little complaining.

Peggy was given a clean bill of health, so she went back to her dorm to have a nice hot bath and get changed, explaining to the other three what they had missed as they walked. She went back to the infirmary afterwards, feeling much better, and found Rebecca sitting in a chair next to Bucky while he slept, stroking his hand. Steve was watching them from his bed with a sleepy smile.

"Told you he'd be alright," she said, sitting down on the mattress next to Steve and leaning back against the wall.

Steve turned to look up at her. "Yeah. Thanks for taking care of us."

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. "You're welcome," she said again. "Get some rest."

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied with a smile, and he nuzzled his head against her hip as he closed his eyes. She smiled and carded her fingers back through his hair, stroking his head and not thinking about how close she'd come to losing some of the most important people in her life today.

"Peggy?"

She looked up and saw Rebecca standing next to her with a shy smile. "Hello, Rebecca."

"Hi. Jim told me about what happened today. Did you really save Steve and Jay from getting eaten by sirens?" she asked, sounding a little bit awed. Peggy nodded, and Rebecca smiled and flung her arms around her in a hug, surprising her. "Thanks," she whispered huskily in her ear.

Peggy smiled and pulled an arm up to hug her back. "You're welcome," she said warmly, one sister to another.

* * *

_What these boys would do without Peggy, I don't know. Hope you have a good weekend! I'd love to hear what you're thinking in the meantime._

_Oh, and 'Tacet' is a musical term that means 'do not sing'._


	54. Christmas At Home

_I suppose I could have timed this better so that this chapter came up next week for Christmas, but, oh well. Lots of missions and action have been happening, so now it's time to slow down a bit, relax and heal and enjoy time at home and see if Steve can figure out what to get Peggy for Christmas.  
_

* * *

With only two weeks left before exams and Bucky benched because of his bad arm, Phillips took the Howling Commandos off the mission roster for the rest of the term. Peggy continued to work on mission reports and intelligence gathering in her little corner of the office, and sometimes when Steve got bored, he would come and sit there in the afternoons. Usually, he was able to help with something—she always welcomed a second set of eyes going over intel—and if he got distracting, Peggy had no qualms about telling him so and kicking him out.

"What's with all the red in the Alps?" he asked, pointing to her corkboard of maps and strings and photographs that he was under no circumstances ever allowed to touch. A series of red pins poked out in a line on one of the maps, stretching from one end of the Alps to the other. They had not been there yesterday.

"A theory I'm working on," she replied. "It has to do with the Valkyrie." Steve was always impressed with her ability to keep track of so many things—the hunt for Schmidt and the Tesseract, this mysterious Valkyrie he was building, selecting missions for the Howlies and coordinating other teams, sorting through mountains of intel and reports and trying to find this spy.

"Has anyone figured out what that is yet?" he asked.

"No," she said. "But, based on reports from the factories we know about and the ones you boys have so thoughtfully been blowing to pieces, we know that whatever it is, it's absolutely massive. There's very few places to hide something so big without _someone_ seeing something, so I'm thinking it might be underground. And, for practicality's sake, underground bases and things are easier to construct under a mountain."

"So, you think that base is in the Alps somewhere?"

"I think it's a safe bet. Unfortunately…" She waved a hand at the map. "Well, there's an awful lot of Alps to work with. I haven't really gotten very far with the idea—I just wanted to get it down so I could start thinking about it. My main concern is still this spy of ours. You heard about what happened to the 49th?"

Steve nodded. The 49th was Jim's old unit. They'd gone on what should have been a straightforward extraction mission to Marseilles: make contact with an S.S.R. informant and get them out. The area was supposed to be low risk, and recon had shown over and over again the small numbers of opposition they should have met. They'd apparated straight into the middle of an ambush—the informant had been killed, as had three members of the team, and half of them were still in the infirmary. It had been a mess, and while the prevailing theory was bad luck and bad intel, Peggy was more convinced than ever that there was a spy in their ranks. Based on what she'd told Steve she'd heard Phillips saying, he was looking into it too.

It was awful, what had happened to them, but…"Did that help you narrow down at all who it could be?"

Peggy shrugged. "A bit. That mission wasn't particularly classified, so a lot of people had access to it, but at least it's a list of names. I'm keeping lists of everyone who has access pre-mission to the ones I think were sabotaged, trying to find someone who appears on all of them. At the moment, that's far too many people."

Steve nodded, and they discussed it a little more before he left to meet Bucky in the library. It was easier to just coordinate their homework times since they shared all their textbooks. They usually worked at the same time anyway, but every now and then, Steve wished they could afford to have their own sets of books. He always chastised himself when he thought that, though. Considering how much money he knew the Barneses spent feeding him and buying him clothes—he kept growing, and he'd just hit six-one—it felt awfully ungrateful.

He arrived at the library at the same time as Bucky, and he resisted the urge to pull out his chair for him and help him unpack his school bag—his left arm was still in a sling and generally unmoving, so he was doing everything with one hand, but he got awfully tetchy if he thought Steve was babying him. "Hey, Buck," he said. He sat down and pulled out a stack of parchment, unscrewing his ink bottle and setting it in the middle of the table. "Have a nice chat with Vicki?" He and Vicki Marlowe were currently 'on' again.

"Yeah, but not much of one," Bucky said, struggling a little to get his bag off before he sat down. "They've got these pre-N.E.W.T. things they're doing during exams, so she's studying. Apparently, it's really hard to get the grades you need to go on to Healer training."

"Well, sure," Steve nodded. "You've got to be good at just about everything."

"I guess you kinda want that in a Healer," Bucky agreed. He sighed, flipping the pages of a dark green textbook. "Remind me why I decided to go on to O.W.L.-level Potions?"

"Keeping your options open," Steve reminded him. Though it was fair that Bucky should ask. This painkiller potion project was a doozy.

"Yeah, well, maybe I'll just get a non-magical job. I could be a mechanic, like Pop," Bucky said. "Nobody shoots at you, and things don't explode and melt your skin off," he added, referring to an unfortunate incident over at the Slytherin table earlier in the week.

"Things sometimes explode in a mechanic shop," Steve pointed out, craning his neck to see what page Bucky was on.

"Only if things go very, _very_ wrong," Bucky argued. "Right here," he said, tapping the open page. "Solanaceae." He smirked. "Belladonna and tomatoes."

Steve felt his cheeks getting warm, but he just shook his head and started writing.

After the O.W.L.'s last year, end of term exams seemed like a breeze. Steve didn't even stay up so late studying that he fell asleep in the common room. "Good thing, too," Bucky told him as they were packing up to go home. "Not that I could carry you to bed anyway, but I doubt I could even drag you with this arm." His arm was healing—it was even healing up a little bit ahead of the schedule Nurse Rains had predicted—but it was taking time and he still had very little motion he could manage with it.

"I still think you're making that up," Steve protested, rolling his clean socks together.

"Deny it all you like, Stevie, but you used to pass out face down in your textbooks and I would peel you up out of a puddle of drool and carry your tiny little butt to bed. Ask Winston if you don't believe me."

Steve snorted.

The train ride home was long as usual, and Bucky's shoulder was stiff and sore by the time they disembarked. He was inclined to be in a bad mood about it, but he smiled when they got into the car and Steve asked, "So, Mrs. Barnes, did Becky tell you about her new _boy_friend?", dragging out the word 'boy' in a singsong voice.

"Ste-eve!" Becky whined.

"Becky and Matthew, sittin' in a tree…" Bucky started singing, grinning broadly.

"Jay! Stop it!" She slapped his leg.

"Hey, don't hit me, I'm wounded," Bucky told her, poking her in the side.

"I hit you in the leg; you didn't get bit there."

Steve clicked his tongue in disapproval. "What would your new boyfriend say if he saw how you treated your brother?"

"Mama, make them stop!" Becky pleaded, turning to the front seat for help.

"Now, I seem to recall earlier this year the tables being turned," Mrs. Barnes said serenely.

"And wasn't there something similar last year with a girl named Helen?" Mr. Barnes put in. "Or was it Vicki?"

"That's right, let's not forget about them," Mrs. Barnes agreed. "I think this might only be fair."

"Mama!" Becky whined.

Steve laughed and Bucky cackled gleefully. "That's called payback, Munchkin," he laughed, poking her again. "That's one of my other jobs as your big brother."

"Do you want to tell us about this Matthew, Rebecca?" Mrs. Barnes asked.

"No," Becky pouted.

"Alright. How about your Quidditch club instead?" Official school sports were still on hold, what with the bulk of the older players being in fighting units and the field having been converted into a physical training ground, but the younger students had put about a dozen informal teams together and played games on a complicated rotating schedule down by the lake where there was a large flat area. Becky eagerly latched on to the change of topic and started talking about her last game—she was Keeper for her team. Esther was Seeker and Captain.

Bucky couldn't do much to help out around the house until his shoulder was better, though he did try. Whenever he did, his ma would tell him to stop it and smack him on the head—he was very nearly six feet tall now, and she had to stretch up quite a bit to do it. She made quite a fuss over him and his shoulder, and Bucky oscillated between enjoying the attention and being embarrassed by it.

Steve stepped in to do Bucky's share of the chores until he had full mobility again, and he was happy to help. He didn't feel like he had to earn his right to stay here anymore, like he had when he first moved in—he felt very much at home here now, and that seemed like all the more reason to keep things running smoothly. (He _did_ try to chip in for groceries and things with the money he was being paid for his S.S.R. work, but the Barneses seldom let him, telling him he should put it into savings for when he got out of school.) That being said, he would complain dramatically and at length when he had to do things like change Bucky's sheets on laundry day or fold his clothes for him, just because it made Bucky laugh, and it reminded him that him not being able to do it for himself was temporary.

"Well," Becky said one evening while they were sitting around listening to the radio. "At least now you've got an excuse for your 'squares' to look as bad as they do." She was craning her neck to look over at her brother's ongoing attempt to master knitting. It was better than it used to be. It slanted too much to be called a square, but it was in the ballpark. Maybe a rhombus?

"Once I get this thing done, I'm going to give it to you," Bucky said, dropping the needle from his left hand for the seventh time that evening. It rolled under the couch and Becky picked it up and handed it back. "And you're going to wear it."

She snorted.

"Then I'll make another one and give it to Matthew, and you can wear them together and match," he continued.

"Yeah, I don't know if we'll still be going out in Sixth Year," Becky said.

A snort came from the easy chair that sounded suspiciously like Mr. Barnes, but he was calmly reading the newspaper when they looked over.

"I'm going to finish this thing and then tie you to the porch with it," Bucky warned. He finished a few more stitches then set the needles down, rolling his shoulder with a groan. "But not tonight."

"You need your shoulder stuff?" Steve asked. Nurse Rains had sent him home with a jar of salve that smelled very strongly of menthol that he was supposed to rub into the wound on his shoulder twice a day. It was rebuilding the damaged muscle and skin, and it numbed the pain for a while too. The show ending on the radio would indicate that it was about time for the evening application.

"I'll get it!" Becky declared, bouncing off the couch and dashing to the bathroom. She raced back and hopped onto the couch, nudging Bucky with her foot until he slipped off and sat on the floor in front of her. "Come on, get your shirt down," she said, nudging him with her foot again.

"Working on it," Bucky told her. It was a little tough, getting the top two buttons of his pajama top undone one-handed, but he finally got it and tugged the collar over to expose his shoulder. "Quit poking me with your gross feet."

"I had a shower already, my feet are clean. They smell like lavender soap, see?" she said, thrusting one leg off of the couch and waggling her toes in his face.

"You know what? I'm gonna have Steve do it," Bucky said, smacking her foot and starting to move across the floor.

"Oh, quit being a baby and sit down," she said, pulling her foot back and grinning. She unscrewed the lid of the jar and scooped a hand down into the cool blue gel inside. Bucky tugged his shirt down again and she started rubbing it carefully across his shoulder. It looked a lot better than it did at first—the skin was all back to its normal color, and the muscle had knitted together so that there was no longer anything missing. The skin was growing over it nicely, but it was still knotted and scarred, jagged lines of pink stretching out in angry lines. Nurse Rains had said that most of the scarring should clear up by the time it was done, but it had been a deep bite, and she couldn't promise that it wouldn't leave _any_ marks.

It was a rainy winter, and the power ended up going out a lot in the evenings the week leading up to Christmas. Steve finished the books he'd brought from the library, so Bucky offered to teach him how to knit. "Hey, I'm not great at it, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing. Besides, what else are you gonna do in the dark?"

"I could draw."

"Not by candlelight. It's not good for your eyes. Here." Bucky slapped a pair of knitting needles into his hand. "Pick some yarn."

Steve picked a nice, cheerful red and watched carefully as Bucky showed him how to hold his hands. Becky was watching skeptically from over the top of her book in the chair by the Christmas tree, but she made no comment. Steve took that to mean Bucky was doing this part right.

It turned out Bucky was pretty good at the theoretical side of knitting. He knew the holds and stitches and everything, he just couldn't always get his hands to do it. He was a much better teacher than he was a knitter, and Steve managed to get two squares done that looked like squares by the end of the night.

"See?" Bucky said, patting his shoulder. "Told you I knew what I was doing."

"Then why can't _you_ do it?" Becky asked.

"Those who can't do, teach," he replied calmly.

Steve continued working on his knitting project for the rest of the week. An idea had struck him, and he wanted to get it done by Christmas. He hid the completed parts of it from Bucky, acting like he was still working on the squares and getting Becky to show him how to attach everything. He had second thoughts as he placed the finished project under the tree, but as it was Christmas Eve, he had no other options for gifts. He watched a little nervously as Bucky carefully peeled the tape from off his gift, watching his eyebrows furrow in confusion as he tried to figure out what it was, then smiling in relief as Bucky pulled his gift out of the paper and laughed happily.

"Steve, this is fantastic," he said, examining the length of red, white and blue squares. "My very own Captain America scarf." He wrapped it happily around his neck, giving the end a vigorous toss with his no-longer-injured arm. "You make this whole thing yourself?"

Steve blushed a little, but smiled and nodded. "Had a good teacher."

Bucky laughed. "See, Munchkin? I'm not so bad at this knitting thing after all."

Later that day, they had their traditional Christmas dinner, which was just as crowded as usual, if a little noisier and more chaotic. The Kowalski triplets had turned six and started school, and they were still very excited about it and were chattier than usual. They'd also started showing signs of having magic, and though they knew better than to talk about it in front of the Garcias, Aleksy had a cold, and every time he sneezed, the dishes and silverware would rattle up and down the table.

Steve and Bucky were trying to cover for him by shifting around and 'accidentally' kicking the table legs whenever he sneezed, but Steve wasn't sure how well it was working. He chuckled when it happened again and Mrs. O'Brien's fork jumped four inches in the air and flew off the table. "Remember that time we were playing a game and your magic did something weird and I fell through the couch?" he said quietly to Bucky. He was pretty sure they'd been five then.

Bucky laughed. "Oh, man, I was freaking out because you'd just disappeared, and then you started crying because you didn't know where you were, and I could hear you crying, and that made _me_ start crying…"

Steve smiled and shook his head. "Then ma came in and she was trying to calm you down and figure out where I'd gone. I don't think you guys worked it out until the dust under the couch made me start sneezing."

Bucky laughed again. "Dude, you were a mess. Covered in dust from being down there, snot all over your face from crying, and you were missing a chunk of hair that got caught in the couch springs."

"I remember we got Jell-O out of it, though," Steve recalled, still smiling. "Remember? Ma had made some for something at the church, but we were both so upset, she gave us each a bowl." Steve remembered that he'd still been kind of scared, so Bucky had been scooping Jell-O up onto his spoon and making weird noises while he wiggled it around to make Steve laugh.

"Oh, yeah. We didn't get Jell-O when you set my sleeve on fire when we were ten, though."

"No, just a smack on the head," Steve agreed. He'd been mad at something—not at Bucky, but Bucky had been closest, so the flare of magic caught him. "The beginning of my long streak of unintentional combustion."

Bucky chuckled. "Told you you'd grow out of it eventually. Although, can you imagine little unexpected fires just catching all over the place when we're fighting? As long as they caught the Hydra guys and not us, it might come in handy."

Fortunately, Aleksy's accidental magic seemed to be limiting itself to shaking things that shouldn't shake, not inadvertently setting people on fire, and the damage at the end of the day was limited to a broken plate.

There was music and dancing after dessert, though they had to take turns to fit in the living room. Becky convinced Steve to dance a couple with her, and she was very gracious about the way he kept stepping on her feet.

"It's better than dancing with Elian," she told him after he apologized again. "He goes too fast and kicks me in the shins." She looked around Steve's arm then back up at him. "Will you dance the next one with me too? He's looking at me like he's waiting to ask me."

Steve laughed, shooting a look back over his shoulder. Elian was watching them hopefully. He felt a little bad for the kid, but he danced the next one with Becky, then they sat down for a while and let the adults take a turn in the space.

"Whatcha getting Peggy for Christmas?" Bucky asked later that night when they were getting ready for bed.

Steve paused. "I don't know. I guess since we're going out now, I should get her something. I haven't been able to think of anything, though."

"Yes, since you're going out, you _should_ get her something," Bucky confirmed. "Hmm…" he mused. "Jewelry? You guys that serious yet?"

"How serious is jewelry serious?" Steve asked. Another thought occurred to him. "And I don't know if I could afford it anyway. Isn't jewelry pretty expensive?"

"The nice stuff usually is," Bucky said.

"Well, let's say no jewelry, then," Steve said. "I wouldn't want to get her something that looks cheap."

"Good thinking. She like candy? She showed you what all that British magic candy was, you could take her something American."

Steve inclined his head thoughtfully. That was a possibility.

"Ooh, wait!" Bucky exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "How fast can you knit?"

"Huh?"

"Is there enough time between now and school starting that you could make her a scarf? That would be good."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. You're pretty good at it, and something you made especially for her? She'd love it," Bucky said confidently.

Steve considered. "I could do that. I might have to work on it a lot during the day, but I think I could get it done in time. You really think she'd like it?"

"Totally," Bucky said. "The stores open back up tomorrow; we'll go out and find you some nice yarn."

After a great deal of debate at the sewing store, Steve finally decided on a warm amber color that would look really nice with her eyes and a soft charcoal as an accent that would keep the brightness of the amber from being too overpowering. He also bought his own pair of knitting needles so he didn't have to keep using Becky's.

It took him the rest of the week, but on the very last night it was ready to be packed along with the rest of his stuff. He didn't realize until they were heading for the train station that he'd forgotten to wrap it, but he supposed he could just give it to her. When they arrived in Hogsmeade, he asked her to wait a minute and he pulled it out of his trunk before they got off and headed for the carriages.

"I, uh, I made you something for Christmas," he told her, feeling his cheeks going warm as he handed it over.

"You did?" she asked curiously, unfolding the neatly folded scarf.

"Yeah. I mean, if you don't like it, you don't have to wear it and stuff, I—"

"Steve, it's lovely," she cut him off. "Thank you." Then she kissed him, and he supposed she must have really liked it after all.

* * *

_Merry early Christmas, everybody! See you Friday!_


	55. The Parisian Encounter

_Alright, the team is getting back to work. Time for some black market intrigue on the streets of Paris. Also, Peggy tries a bit of match-making.  
_

* * *

The first few weeks back at school passed fairly normally for a January term. Classes continued to increase in difficulty, and Peggy, like she knew several of her classmates were, was starting to think about what she wanted to do after school. While it was true they had over a year to go, once people started talking about it, it was hard to keep your mind off of it.

"I think you should carry on with this S.S.R. business," Kelly told her one night.

"You do?" Peggy had been thinking the same, but she wouldn't have thought Kelly would encourage her to pursue it. Especially when, hopefully someday soon, the war was over.

Kelly looked away from setting the curlers in her hair and her reflection gave Peggy a pointed look in the mirror. "Of course. The way you rave about it, I wouldn't have thought you'd want to do anything else."

"The way she complains about it is more like," Martha said from her side of the room.

"I don't complain about it," Peggy protested.

Her roommates all looked at each other with knowing glances. "Of course, you do," Martha told her. She set down the skirt she was mending. "It's quite fun trying to figure out who or what it is you're moaning about when you're being all classified about it. But that's why we know you've got to go on with it after school. You wouldn't complain so much if you didn't care."

Peggy supposed she had a point.

"I think it's brilliant," Rose told her, coming out of the bathroom. Rose had been one of the few girls aside from Peggy who'd wanted to sign up for service. She'd been denied, like all the other girls had, and, given that her physical stature was not unlike that of a pre-serum Steve, the S.S.R. had been reluctant to take her, even in one of the clerical roles they'd been offering. She begged for as many unclassified details as she could get from Peggy and lived vicariously through her missions. "So many people would be happy to just be there, but you got in and you're trying to make it so the rest of us are allowed too. Just like you did with Quidditch," she said with a grateful smile. Unlike pre-serum Steve, Rose was a fair flyer and had been one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

"Well, I…" Peggy started, feeling her face going hot.

"Ooh, you've embarrassed her, Rose!" Louise teased.

"See, this is why you and Steve are so perfect for each other," Kelly said, spinning around in her chair to face her with a grin. "You've both got this champion of the underdog thing going on."

"And whenever anyone tries to compliment either of you on it, you both turn as red as Rose's hair!" Martha declared with a giggle.

Peggy threw a pillow at Martha and caught her square in the face, which only made her laugh harder.

"Oh, let her be," Louise said, chuckling. "She's not near as fun to tease about Steve since they're actually together now. Although, speaking of Steve and his boys, perhaps you two would know," she continued, catching both Peggy and Kelly's eyes. "Is it true that Bucky and Vicki split again?"

"Did they?" Peggy asked.

"Gabe said something about that a couple of days ago," Kelly said. "I think they did. It wasn't a fight or anything, Vicki just didn't have time for a relationship with her studies, so they parted ways."

"Why do you ask?" Peggy wondered, one corner of her mouth curving up in a smile. Louise was one of the few girls at Hogwarts who had always seemed impervious to Bucky's charms. (Even Peggy couldn't say she was _totally _immune.) "Do you fancy him?"

Louise rolled her eyes. "Not me. _So_ not my type. But rumor has it someone does…" she said, rolling her head with a smirk in Rose's direction.

"Really?" Peggy asked with a smile as all other heads in the rooms turned to Rose.

Rose, though the shade of red of her face very nearly matched her hair, was smiling shyly. "Yeah, maybe. I mean, he _is_ gorgeous, isn't he?" This was met with nods of agreement from the rest of the room. "And he's really sweet. Last week in Herbology when I dropped that tray of pot plants, he stayed after and helped me tidy up, and he was so nice."

"I could talk to him for you, if you like," Peggy offered.

Rose looked simultaneously thrilled and appalled at the offer. "Oh, well, I…"

"Oh, give me some credit," Peggy chuckled. "It's not like I'm going to walk up and say, 'Rose told me she fancies you.' I'd just feel him out a little."

"She _is_ a secret agent, you know," Martha pointed out. "The very essence of discreet."

"Well, I…maybe," Rose said. "I mean, only if you want to."

"I would be happy to," Peggy told her. "Now," she continued, in an effort to draw attention off Rose. "Weren't we talking about jobs when all this started?"

They went back to their original discussion, which had not made it much farther than the general consensus that Peggy should remain in the S.S.R. Martha wanted to do something with animals, and Kelly had been learning a lot about radio equipment from Gabe and thought she might like to take some non-magical college courses in electronics. Rose wanted to go into Herbology, and Louise's ideas for the future seemed to change on the half hour. She was contemplating the after-school coursework involved in wandmaking when she looked down at her watch, snapped out a curse and ran out of the room, because she was the prefect and she should have turned off lights for the First-Years half an hour ago.

The next morning, Peggy met with Steve and Bucky, Donovan and Colin, and Ethan and Michael to get their reports on the factory they'd gone to destroy last night. Professor Phillips was not present—he trusted her to get the necessary information and pass it along to him. She was proud of her boys—when they'd first started these joint missions, she'd agonized over the inclusion of the 89th because of their history with Ethan, but after their initial grumbling, they'd set that aside and worked together really well. They even had good things to say about how he led his team. They were sometimes said begrudgingly—especially if Bucky was saying them—but they were said. Peggy was somewhat amused, though not surprised, that, though it was Steve who had borne the brunt of Ethan's bullying in their earlier years, it was Bucky who held the deepest resentment. It was, in its own way, rather sweet.

"Are you finally warming up to him?" Peggy asked as the meeting broke up.

"What?" Bucky replied.

"Ethan," she answered. "You can't tell me you weren't laughing at that joke he made just now. I saw you."

Bucky let out a longsuffering sigh. "I don't know, warming up is an awfully strong word. He's not…He's not the devil. How's that?"

"About as good as I could ask for," Peggy said with a smile. She slipped her hand into Steve's and pulled him away from the papers he was straightening. "Lunch?"

They went to the Great Hall and Peggy headed for the Gryffindor table, picking a seat across from Rose. Prior to their meeting, she'd asked Bucky about Vicki and gathered that while he wasn't in any rush to start a new relationship, he wasn't opposed to it either. Since Steve sat next to her, Bucky sat next to Rose, greeting her with a smile. Peggy tugged Steve away for a walk after they finished, knowing that Bucky, ever the gentleman, would not get up and leave Rose to finish eating alone. Her work was done. Whether anything happened from here was up to Rose.

"What's the rush?" Steve asked her.

"No rush," she replied. "I just fancied a walk. It's nice out."

Steve looked down at her, arching a curious eyebrow. "Peggy, it's freezing."

"I know," she said, tugging his arm over her shoulder and snuggling against his side. "And you're so nice and warm."

He smiled and pulled her in a little more comfortably. "I guess it's not that bad out here."

Later that afternoon, she was organizing her folders before a new mission briefing while the team gathered around the table. "Alright, boys," she said. "I know you just got back, but we've got another mission."

"We?" Bucky asked. "Are you coming?"

"I am."

"Yes!" Jim exclaimed, raising both hands straight up over his head. He turned and high-fived Gabe.

"You know, you could have a decent meal without me along if you'd bother to pack your own spices," Peggy pointed out.

"What? No, that's not why we're excited," Gabe protested. "Not totally, anyway."

"What's the mission?" Steve asked.

"There's some black market chatter that's got us nervous," she told them, passing out the contents of her folder. "Some stuff on the non-magical market that sounds a lot like Hydra's blend of magic and technology."

"You're serious?" Dugan asked, running his eyes down Peggy's report. "How did something like that get out?"

"They keep such a tight hold on their stuff," Monty said. "Not to mention, don't they think the Nazis are beneath them?"

"Usually, yes," Peggy agreed. "So, if they are sharing, it can't be for any good reason. And if it's stolen, the fact that Nazis can steal from Hydra is hardly good news either."

"You said it sounds like Hydra's stuff," Bucky said. "Do we know for sure?"

"It's not been confirmed," Peggy replied. "That's what we're going to investigate. If it's not Hydra, well, we can raise a bit of hell for the Nazis on our way out."

"Yes!" Dugan crowed, exchanging gleeful high-fives with Jacques.

"And if it _is_ Hydra, we figure out where they're getting it from and follow it from there," she finished.

"Where are we going?" Steve asked.

"Paris," Peggy replied. Steve groaned. "What?"

"I hate France," Steve sighed.

Jacques sputtered, offended, and Steve hurried on to explain. "No, no, it—every time we have a mission in France, things go really, really badly."

Jacques opened his mouth to protest, then reconsidered and nodded with a little grunt of agreement.

"Well, we'll just have to be careful," Peggy said. Steve had a point, but what were they going to do? Not go?

"Yeah, we say that every time," Steve said, but he gestured for the report she was holding and started reading over it.

The morning of the mission dawned cold and clear. They wanted to get an early start, as it was going to take them the better part of the day to get to Paris. Grindelwald's hold on France seemed to fluctuate, but the Nazis' did not—and with such a strong Nazi presence in Paris, the city had a heavy Grindelwald-loyal contingent as well. Without proper authorization from the ruling Grindelwald party, magical transportation into the city was out, which left trekking through the countryside and hoping they didn't run into any Nazis. Peggy had provided them all with forged papers, just in case. Well, everyone except for Jim and Gabe—they would be spending the journey under invisibility cloaks to avoid unwanted attention. The rest of them were coming in posing as students, farm hands coming in to market or merchants' apprentices. (Since they were going incognito, they wouldn't be wearing their uniforms, and Steve would have to leave his shield behind, since there was nowhere to hide it.)

They were also all going to be entering Paris in separate groups to draw less attention. Bucky and Jacques would be coming in from one direction with Jim and Gabe, most likely in a farmer's truck or wagon. Dugan and Monty had the shortest distance to cover and would be walking in from the East, while Steve and Peggy came in from the North side. Steve had warmed up to the mission a little when Bucky had pointed out this would be a perfect opportunity for him to get to use his motorcycle, which is how Peggy found herself zooming through the French countryside on the back of an ungodly loud machine with her arms wrapped around Steve's chest.

"Not exactly built for stealth, is it?" Peggy shouted. Steve grinned and revved the engine before moving out to pull around a vegetable truck. Peggy shook her head. What her mother would think if she could see her now. Riding something as unseemly as a motorcycle—in trousers, no less!—out in public with her arms wrapped around a young hooligan from the Lower Class. It would be quite the scandal back home. Peggy grinned and rested her head on Steve's shoulder so she could see the road better. It was perfectly exhilarating was what it was. When they got back, Steve would be teaching her how to ride this thing.

The morning portion of the ride was uneventful. They stopped for lunch at a little roadside café, and if not for the fact that they were headed into the heart of Nazi-occupied France to track down magical deadly weapons, it would have felt almost like a date. Peggy thought it was funny that this was the closest to a real date they'd ever actually been on, and Steve agreed and promised to take her somewhere nice once the war was over.

"I might be able to pull off Hogsmeade before that," he told her with a smile. "But anything fancy is going to have to wait."

"What do you mean, wait?" she replied. "You're taking me to Paris. How much more posh can it get?"

Steve laughed. "Oh, sure. The Eiffel Tower, lights on the Seine, Nazis and black market arms dealers…It's all very romantic."

They checked in with the rest of the team, and once everyone had confirmed things were alright, they got back on the road. Traffic was slower as they got closer to the city, and they came to a halt half a mile out at a Nazi checkpoint.

"Here we go," Steve said quietly, taking a deep breath. "You got those papers?"

"Ici," she said, pulling them from her shoulder bag. "Nous sommes Français maintenant, tu te souviens?"

"Yeah, I know," he replied, reaching back to take them from her. The soldier checking papers approached and demanded them, and Steve handed them over with a smile. They were just two students, coming into the city for a lecture. The soldier questioned them as he rifled through the papers, and Steve answered politely. Peggy just sat there and smiled and tried to look innocent. Her French was better than Steve's, but his was more than passable after five and a half years with Jacques, and, given the Nazis' view of women, they'd thought it would be wiser for him to do all the talking.

They were waved through, and Steve handed the papers back to Peggy and she tucked them back in the bag. "We're going to a lecture on Dutch genre paintings and Johannes Vermeer?" she asked curiously.

Steve shrugged. "He wanted to know what lecture we were going to, so I picked something he wouldn't worry was political and that I would actually know about if he decided to keep asking questions. And the Nazis like Vermeer, so I figure he's safe."

"I didn't know that," Peggy said, impressed.

"You know, if we actually _were_ here on a date, I'd take you to see some of his stuff. He uses light like it's just another color on his palette, and that's a lot harder to do than it sounds. And his attention to detail is amazing. There's some really gorgeous stuff."

"I'd like that," she told him, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. "Maybe if there's time after we interrogate some Nazis."

They arrived in town right on schedule and met up with Dugan and Monty, who were lounging against a wall looking disreputable. "I thought we were _not_ supposed to be looking suspicious," Peggy said.

"Turns out Dugan's not very good at looking innocent," Monty said.

"We figure if you can't look innocent, look scary, and people will still leave you alone," Dugan added.

"Mm-hmm," Steve replied. "Tell me you at least found the entrance?"

"Over there," Monty said, nodding at the sewer grate. "Bucky and the others have already gone in. We're spacing it out."

"Good thinking."

One by one, they lifted the grate and slipped into the hole when there were breaks in pedestrian traffic. Bucky was waiting at the bottom when Peggy hit the floor, though there was no sign of the other three. "Hey, Peggy," he greeted, extending a hand to help her off the ladder. "How was the motorcycle?"

"Quite a ride," she replied with a smile. "You four have a good trip?"

Bucky shrugged. "Back of a milk truck's not super-exciting, but it got us here without any Nazi trouble. It's a fair walk down to the market, so the other three went ahead. We didn't think all eight of us should walk in at once."

"Good thinking," Steve said, joining them. "Let's us three go on, and Dugan and Monty can bring up our six."

Bucky hadn't been kidding when he'd said it was a good walk down—they must have gone on for at least half a mile, walking carefully on the ledges above the sewage water. Thankfully, one did get used to the smell after a while. The ledge ended in a wall and another ladder, and they emerged above ground in a dark and dingy alley that had been magically enlarged to the size of a Quidditch pitch. Though the ends of the alley appeared to open back up into the city—and did indeed lead to safer streets if you were leaving—they knew that magical barriers prevented anyone from entering the market any way other than the sewer.

The market itself, though magically hidden, still sold non-magical goods that were harder to come by because of the war, in addition to magical goods of…questionable legality. The shops were all enclosed booths and stalls, with nothing displayed out in the open. Large, visibly armed guards patrolled the spaces between the stalls, occasionally stopping to grab someone who looked out of place and question them.

"Alright," Peggy said. "Let's start shopping."

Since they had an idea of what they were looking for, but not where to find it, the best course of action seemed to be to just browse the shops and see what there was to be found. This wasn't the sort of place one wanted to wait around in _too_ long, so they'd decided to split up, keeping within visual range of at least one other team member at all times. The shops selling magical wares had subtle little star designs etched above the doorframes, so that helped narrow things down a little.

A man with a graying beard stood behind the table in the first shop Peggy entered. She met his icy stare with one of her own. "Can I help you, _Miss_?" he asked in French, drawing out the designation derisively.

"What have you got in the way of portable curses?" she asked, also in French, deciding letting him know that she meant business was best. "I need something more effective than _Bronchiaia_ but less lethal than _Asphyxia_ and it needs to be more portable than what's coming out of Bavaria these days," she said shortly.

He arched an eyebrow, looking somewhat less skeptical. "Of course, Miss," he said, still studying her intently. "I've some lovely cursed necklaces here with the _Pneumata_ curse inside. Very portable, and safe to wear until the activation word is said."

Peggy snorted. "If all you've got to offer is jewelry, I'm clearly wasting my time here. Gemstones are the least effective way of storing curses short of poisoned fruit. You expect me to buy something worthless just because it's pretty?"

"Alright, then," he said, and she allowed herself a small smirk at having passed his test. "Perhaps you'd be more interested in these…" He showed her some of his more dangerous wares, and before too long she was able to get a clear picture of what he sold, and blended magic and science was not it.

She changed her approach in the next shop, where an elderly woman sat behind a table of silver instruments. "Can I help you, dear?" the old woman asked.

"I do hope so," Peggy said, leaning her elbows on the table with a sigh. "My, some of these look dangerous, don't they?" she commented, looking over the silver tools. "Have you got anything for self-defense that's easily concealed?"

The woman smiled. "Depends where you're concealing it, love."

Peggy smiled back. "Somewhere easy to reach in close quarters."

The woman gave her a knowing nod. "Troublesome young man?"

Peggy sighed dramatically. "Only a whole city full of them! Nazi soldiers tramping about like it's their right to grab me anywhere they please!" She ran little risk of getting in trouble for anti-Nazi rhetoric here—if the vendors here fell in line with Nazi law, they'd be in a legitimate market. "And filthy Muggles, the lot of them," she added with a disgusted shudder, catching sight of the tiny Grindelwald emblem pinned to the woman's shawl. "I'm sick to the teeth of it!"

"Oh, right you are, my dear," the woman said sympathetically. "Disgraceful is what it is. Why, my own granddaughter…" She broke off here into a rather lengthy rant about Nazis and men and Muggles, and Peggy nodded in all the right places until she was done.

"Exactly," Peggy agreed. "So, you understand my problem?"

"Of course, dear. Now, for easy concealment, I've got some very lovely blades," she said, pulling out a tray of what were actually very nice knives.

"Well," Peggy hemmed. "Knives I have. What I want is something with a bit more…" She rotated her hand as if searching for a word. "I've really had it with all of this, and I want something that will do some damage. Magical damage. Make them think twice about where they put their hands."

The old woman pulled out a few more trays and showed Peggy more of what she had, and helpfully named some other places in the market she might check as well. Before she left, Peggy was tempted to buy an intricate-looking hairclip the woman was offering with several small blades concealed in the way it folded, but she didn't like the idea of giving money to anyone who supported Grindelwald. Howard could probably work her up something like it when she got back.

She tried a few more shops, having to size up the owner and affect the appropriate demeanor each time. She supposed a 'little girl' (like the last shop owner called her) like herself _did_ seem somewhat out of place here, but it was an awful lot of work convincing them otherwise. In some shops, it was enough that she show them she knew what she was talking about; in others, it took a bit more. She wondered if the boys were having this much trouble. She snorted. She bet none of them had to flirt with slimy dark wizards who used the cramped space of their shops to 'accidentally' brush up against her several times. She shuddered. She wanted a shower.

It was coming up on the end of her second hour there when Peggy finally got something. The shop owner in question was being rather cagey, but he seemed to suggest that he had some guns capable of firing more than just bullets. Peggy tried everything short of beating a straight answer out of him, but he hemmed and hawed and still seemed reluctant to show her his merchandise. She smiled at him sweetly, then turned and left muttering curses under her breath and went to find Steve.

"I think I've got something," she told him, slipping up beside him as he exited another shop. "But he's being a bit difficult. Come use your masculine manliness to get him to talk to me."

He laughed and blushed a little and followed her back to the shop. They picked up Dugan on the way—the boy did know his curses, and if the shop owner wasn't going to cooperate with Peggy, maybe the two giant men she brought back with her would convince him.

Once Steve and Dugan were able to prove they knew what they were after, the merchant was much more forthcoming with his wares. He sort-of-not-really apologized for not showing them to Peggy with some comment about wanting to make sure of things and you know what women are like anyway. Peggy would have understood if Steve had laughed it off and agreed in an attempt to play along, but he just sort of glared at him instead, and she felt something warm expand in her chest and squeezed his hand and watched the merchant try to find his feet again.

Once he got around to showing them what he had, Peggy knew she'd been right. This was exactly what they were looking for. There were no guns that shot the blue lightning leeched from the Tesseract, but there were plenty that caused magical damage. Some shot fire, some shot curses or sprayed potions. Others had bullets that reacted magically once inside the body to maximize damage—burning, or splintering into sharp pieces, or releasing acid that liquified everything it touched. The list went on.

"This is our guy," Dugan said softly as they left the shop.

"I don't think he's Hydra, though," Steve said. "He didn't have any of those Tesseract-energy guns, for one thing, and he just didn't talk like a Hydra agent."

Dugan sighed. "That means we don't get to blow his shop up, do we? We're gonna have to follow him, aren't we?" he huffed.

Steve and Peggy chuckled at how disappointed he sounded. "We couldn't blow the shop up anyway," Peggy pointed out. "Not in a crowded place like this. But we can follow him and see where he gets his stuff and who else he works with."

"Even if he's not Hydra, he needs to be stopped," Steve said. He clapped Dugan on the shoulder. "We'll still get you a fight before the day's out."

The day was almost over, so, rather than risk a confrontation in a crowded hostile market, they decided to set Jacques to tail him. Gabe had taken his invisibility cloak off to explore the market, but he put it back on now to stay behind and back Jacques up. The rest of them moved out through the magical barriers into the streets so that they wouldn't look suspicious hanging around the market for too long.

It wasn't too much later that Gabe announced they were on the move, and they made their way through the streets of Paris, avoiding crowds and trying to act natural. Which Peggy found hard to do with Jim humming Bing Crosby's 'Only Forever' behind her and Steve as they walked.

"Jim, if I could see you right now, I would thump you," Steve growled.

"Why do you think I'm staying under the invisibility cloak?" came Jim's voice from somewhere to their left.

Once they got out of the crowded part of town (Peggy was surprised to see just how much normal life seemed to carry on despite the Nazi occupation), Jim did stop humming. Everyone got much more serious as they made their way through quieter streets into dingier areas of town. Gabe appeared from out of the darkness to lead them the last few streets into the neighborhood.

"Jacques is watching the house," he told them quietly. "Our guy went in fifteen minutes ago. So far, he seems to be alone. The setup looks a little janky to be Hydra, but we picked up a couple of alarm spells on the house."

"Let's see what we've got, huh?" Jim said, pulling his cloak off and moving forward with Dugan to check out the alarm spells.

"So, what's the plan, Captain?" Monty asked.

Steve pondered the house. "We need to know what this guy knows—who he is and how he got all this stuff. Once we get around the alarms, half of us will go in the front and half in the back, we'll get him and we'll question him. Peggy, you can do the questioning. Jacques and Monty, you two watch the entrances, and Bucky and Gabe—take a look around and see what else he's got tucked away."

The alarm spells were a little more sophisticated than they'd been expecting, but they were eventually able to get through them without setting anything off. Peggy went in through the front along with Bucky, Steve and Gabe. The house was dark on the lower floors, dusty, and had the air of a place that had not been lived in for a while. The furniture was minimal and there was no sign of any sort of personal touch—no photographs, or shoes by the door, or half-finished cups of coffee on an end table. Either their merchant friend had just moved in, or this was some sort of waystation and not his residence—and if that was the case, haste might be prudent. Who knew who else might stop in?

The man was very surprised to see them, but quick enough on his feet that he was able to put up a bit of a fight. There were eight of them, however, and only one of him, so it was over soon enough. As Monty and Jacques tied him up, Jim was examining a burned-looking spot on the wall where Peggy had ducked out of the way of a curse the man had fired.

"Good thing your reflexes are on point," Jim told her, letting out a low whistle. The spot on the wall was still glowing a little bit. "Dude, that is…" He shook his head, shooting a look of disgust at the guy tied to the chair. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

The man glared back. "You attack me and expect me not to defend myself?" he asked in an unexpectedly American accent.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"I haven't seen it before, but it makes that melty potion you used at Mueller's place look like a spa treatment," Jim replied.

Steve looked like there were several things he wanted to say to that, but Peggy put a hand on his arm. "He missed. I'm fine," she said softly. "We're about to start interrogating him; don't let him push your buttons and start off with the advantage."

Steve drew in a deep breath and nodded. "Right." He turned back to the rest of the team. "Alright, we've got work to do." They nodded and Jacques and Monty took off for guard duty, and Gabe and Bucky left to search the house. Dugan went to help Monty and Jacques, but Jim stayed behind. Steve looked at Peggy and gestured graciously at the man in the chair. "He's all yours."

"You break into my house, tie me up, and hand me over to a little girl to interrogate? Who the hell even are you people?" the man asked.

"Peggy Carter, S.S.R.," Peggy told him. She nodded at Steve. "That's Captain America. Howling Commando," she added, with another nod at Jim. Jim waved cheerfully.

She was pleased to note a look of apprehension appear on the man's face. "Whoa," he said. "Just a minute. S.S.R.?"

"Mm-hmm."

"And…" His eyes flicked to Steve and then back to Peggy. "Wow, they actually sent Captain America after me. Guess I'm a bigger deal than I thought."

"Don't flatter yourself," Peggy said. "Let's start with the basics, shall we? What's your name?"

"You letting your secretary play with the big boys?" he asked Steve. "That's cute."

"Listen, she shot the last guy who didn't want to answer her questions, so I'd play nice if I was you," Steve replied.

"I'm afraid I didn't bring a gun with me, though," Peggy said with an exaggerated sigh. "Lucky you've got such a nice selection of creative weaponry. Jim, would you be a dear and fetch me one?"

"Happily," Jim replied, taking a step towards the door.

"Whoa, whoa, okay," the guy said. "Just…fine. Coleman, alright? Eric Coleman."

"And what brings you to France, Mr. Coleman?"

"Business."

"Oh, well, that's very informative. Let me rephrase: What is a low-life black market arms dealer like yourself doing in one of the most dangerous cities in Europe with a shop's worth of blended magic and technology that's not available at any legitimate market in the world?"

Coleman smiled. "You recognized it, huh? You're smarter than you look, sweetheart."

"Wish I could say the same about you. Are you going to answer the question?"

Coleman shrugged. "Like you said, sugar, most dangerous city in Europe. A man's got some powerful weapons to sell, easiest place to do it."

Peggy considered Coleman. She looked over at the spot on the wall where the curse was still glowing faintly. A curse Jim hadn't seen before. "These weapons of yours," she said, looking back at Coleman. "You made them yourself, didn't you?" The precise blends of magic and tech they'd seen in the shop were different than what Howard put together, and they didn't fall in line with Hydra's style either. If he was clever enough to invent curses, he was clever enough to experiment with magic and tech. If only he had some sort of moral compass that allowed him to discriminate who he sold it to.

Coleman smiled. "You got yourself a smart little cookie there, Captain," he said. "I'd hang on to her."

"You know what?" Steve started, taking a step forward, but Peggy raised a hand. She appreciated his ire on her behalf, but if she hadn't been able to handle a condescending misogynist without getting her feathers ruffled, she wouldn't have made it to sixteen.

"He's not worth it, Steve," she said. "All Eric here is is one of those pathetic sorts of wizards who was never able to amount to anything useful, and so had to resort to quick cons and cheap spells to make a fast Galleon. He's the sort you'd find in any old market selling water mixed with toilet cleaner and calling it wart-removal potion. While he _may_ be clever enough to figure out how to blend a bit of magic and technology, he's, sadly, _not_ clever enough to do anything important with that knowledge. He sells his weapons, along with his principles, to whoever has the money—Allies, Nazis, Aurors, dark wizards…" she shrugged. "He's worth less to the world than the trouble it's going to take to clean up the mess he's made." Okay, so maybe she was a _little_ ruffled.

Coleman wasn't smiling anymore. "Think you're awfully smart, don't you, you little bi—"

Coleman got cut off mid-insult because Steve punched him in the jaw so hard he knocked his chair over. He started shrieking as soon as he hit the floor, somewhat to Steve and Peggy's surprise, until they looked behind them and saw Jim leaning against the doorframe and twirling his wand in his fingers. "Oops," he said, sounding exactly the opposite of concerned. "Wand must have slipped." Peggy smiled. She did love her boys.

"Looks like the interrogation is going well," Bucky said, walking back into the room.

"Very informative," Peggy replied. "What did you find?"

"All kinds of stuff," Bucky answered. "This guy is loaded. Without apparating, I don't know how we're supposed to get it all out of here."

"Well, Dugan did want to blow stuff up," Steve said. "I say we take it all off the market."

Bucky nodded. Peggy knew Phillips would love to have some of what Coleman was selling, but she also knew Steve's distaste of magically enhanced weaponry. She was inclined to agree. There was enough of this out there that Coleman had sold already—it would be better for everyone if his stash was decommissioned.

"We'd better do it quick, though," Bucky said. "Based on some of the stuff we found, Gabe thinks more people will be here before too long."

"You didn't think I was in this all on my lonesome, did you?" Coleman laughed hoarsely from the floor. He coughed and sputtered and shut up as Steve shot a silencing charm at him.

"In case the fist to the jaw wasn't clear enough, _shut up_," Steve told him. "Did he say how much time we have?" he asked, turning back to Bucky.

Bucky looked like he really wanted to ask what Coleman had done to make Steve so angry, but he shook his head. "He was guessing ten minutes, tops. And no idea how many," he added, preempting Steve's next question.

Steve nodded thoughtfully. "Alright, let's pack it up. We'll get out and keep an eye on the place, see how many people show up. Then we can plan another strike, get back in and take out the inventory."

"We taking this _kusogaki_ with us?" Jim asked, nodding at Coleman.

"Probably should," Steve sighed.

"Got him," Jim said, shooting a coil of rope out of his wand and tying Coleman up, then levitating him towards the door. "Oops," he said when Coleman's head knocked into the doorframe.

"Anything in here you think we need?" Steve asked Peggy.

"Not if we're coming back later," she said. Coleman's belongings would definitely bear looking through—especially if there were designs for the weapons he made—but there wasn't time to sort it all out before the company Gabe was predicting showed up.

Steve nodded. "Let's go, then." He leaned in and lowered his voice as they moved towards the door. "You okay?"

She smiled and twined her fingers through his, giving his hand a squeeze. "Mm-hmm. I've got a thicker skin than that." She nudged his arm. "Though it was _very_ satisfying seeing you knock him over."

Steve huffed a semi-amused laugh. "Only been wanting to do it since he opened his mouth."

They met up with the others downstairs, but their luck ran out as they made for the back door. While they were crossing the living room, the fireplace roared to life with green flames and Coleman's partners came shooting out of it one by one. Like Coleman, they were remarkably quick on their feet—the boys and Peggy didn't have time to do any more than get into a defensible position before they started taking fire.

Peggy counted at least seven of them before she ducked down behind the sofa to miss a spell flying her way. She sent a spell of her own under the couch and into the feet of one of the newcomers, hearing him shriek with pain as it connected.

An explosion sounded behind her, showering her with bits of wood and debris as the wall behind her collapsed. Jacques leapt forward into the fray, howling, and Steve jumped back, ducking down with a shield spell to cover Gabe, who'd been brought down to the floor in the pile of rubble, and Monty, who was frantically pulling him out. Peggy rolled out from behind the couch and started shooting spell after spell, joining Jacques in drawing their fire away from them.

She was distantly aware of Gabe groaning and Monty saying he had him, but the knot of attacking wizards split and Peggy ran after the nearest one. Fighting with wands was bad enough, but somewhere in the house was their store of magical weapons, and it would only get worse if they got to those. Dugan and Bucky clearly had the same idea, running after two more that headed in opposite directions. Jacques remained dueling in the living room. She couldn't see Jim.

She darted into a narrow hallway and came out in the kitchen. The wizard she was chasing waved his wand and the contents of the knife block in the corner came hurtling through the air at her. With a quick motion, she lashed out with her wand and caught the flying wall of cutlery in midair, then spun it and sent it rushing back in the direction it came from. Most of the knives embedded themselves in the far wall, but her opponent hit the floor with a choked gurgling sound as the rest found purchase between his shoulders. He was very still when she passed him, but she stomped down on his wand, snapping it in half as she passed. Just in case.

She came out of the kitchen into another hallway, this one empty, though the sounds of combat echoed on all sides. Before she could decide which way to go, Dugan and Bucky appeared on the landing above, dueling one of the merchants. He pulled a handgun from his belt and fired it, a wave of energy that Peggy could feel downstairs blasting out of it and catching Dugan full in the chest. Dugan flew through the railing and crashed into the floor a few feet in front of Peggy, cracking the floorboards and dropping part of the way through them. Upstairs, Bucky was thrown in the opposite direction, colliding with the wall with an audible thud.

"_Expelliarmus_!" Peggy yelled, sending the gun flying from the wizard's hand, then rolling to the side to avoid a fireball that burst out of his wand and burned a hole in the wall behind her. He fired another one, and this time _he_ ducked when Peggy's shield spell sent it ricocheting back at him.

Bucky, meanwhile, had found his feet, and sent a spell at the wizard while he was ducking that sent him flying through the hole Dugan had made in the bannister. He hit the ground and Dugan, still laying in his hole in the floor, twitched his wand and brought a bookshelf down on top of him. He shot a pained grin at Peggy. "Teamwork," he croaked.

Peggy smiled, but didn't have time for more than that, because Jim and Steve appeared in the doorway coming from the entryway with three more men right behind them. Steve jumped up to avoid a spell being shot at him and flipped around in the air, catching his attacker's head with his feet before he landed.

"Showoff," Dugan rasped, clambering out of the hole in the floor.

Bucky was halfway down the stairs, firing curses at the two remaining wizards who were attacking Steve and Jim, and Peggy spun around at the sound of someone else coming in from the kitchen. Coleman seemed to have gotten loose during the chaos, and a shield spell saved her from that nasty curse he had tried to hit her with upstairs. She ducked and rolled forward, keeping her shield up with her wand and pulling a knife from her boot with her other hand. She slashed at the back of Coleman's legs as she rolled, and she was not above admitting that that was a very satisfying noise he made.

She sprang to her feet and slashed at him with the same spell she'd used on the sirens a couple of months ago. Blood sprayed from his shoulder and he roared, sending a series of curses at her with such ferocity that she had to duck back into the kitchen and behind the counter. She slashed at the air again and again as he came after her, scrabbling back across the tile as gashes ripped open across his chest and face and rolling under the table as he finally collapsed in front of her.

She sprang up, refusing to think about the blood she nearly slipped in as she ran back to where the boys were still fighting. Three more of the black market wizards had joined the fight, and there must have been more than seven of them coming out of that fireplace. There was a gunshot and Bucky cried out, dropping to the ground clutching at his leg and tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs. Peggy was closest and she rushed over, shielding them both as she dropped down next to him. "Bucky?"

He was biting his lip, looking like he was trying very hard not to scream. "Burns. It burns," he hissed, involuntary tears pooling in his eyes. At first Peggy thought he just meant it was burning with the pain of being shot, but she touched his calf gingerly and pulled her hand away with a yelp of surprise—his skin felt like it was on fire. It was one of Coleman's magically enhanced guns.

"_Gelida_," she said, dropping her shield and waving her wand over his leg. She could feel the burst of cool air coming out of her wand, and the blood on the leg of his trousers started to crystalize, but he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "_Sine Sensu_," she tried.

Bucky opened his eyes, breathing a little more slowly. "I can't feel my leg," he said.

"I couldn't think of anything else," she replied.

He nodded. "That'll work." He grabbed his wand from where it had fallen next to him. "I can shield myself," he told her. "Go."

"Are you sure you're alright?"

He nodded. "Get back in there."

She nodded and got to her feet. The fight was moving back toward the living room. She followed, noting that only three of the merchant wizards remained in the fight and they did not appear to be getting any more reinforcements. In the living room, Steve, Dugan and Jim were still fighting. Gabe had been moved out of the line of fire, and Jacques was alternatively shielding him and firing curses into the melee. Monty was nowhere to be seen. Dugan was moving slower than usual, as though every bone in his body ached, and Peggy supposed being thrown down a flight of stairs would do that. Jim was fighting alongside him, covering his weak side, and Steve was on his own on the other side of the room, clearly missing his shield but more than holding his own.

Peggy fired a couple of curses at the two who were battling Steve. One of them grunted in pain and doubled over as her spell connected, but Peggy didn't see what happened after that, staggering backward at a loud noise and the sudden accompanying punch of pain in her gut. She clutched her hand to her stomach and looked down, surprised to see blood covering her hand and oozing out between her fingers. What…Oh. She'd been shot.

Her legs shook and buckled of their own accord, and she found herself connecting with the dusty carpet with a painful thump. That actually hurt more than getting shot had, and she…she could get up, she could still—well, she could if her arms would move, anyway, why weren't they moving? Oh, wait, they were moving, just slowly and heavily, like they were made of lead. The more she tried to move them, the harder it got to do. And Jim was next to her now, trying to stop her moving, and he looked like he was saying something, but there was this loud sort of rushing noise in her ears and she couldn't really hear him. This wasn't at all what she had thought getting shot would feel like. She would have thought it would hurt more. Unless…Wait, she was probably going into shock, wasn't she? That was, that was bad. She knew that. But she wasn't sure how to…

"Aa-aa-ah!" she cried as Jim pushed down hard on her stomach, and that was one way to shake the shock, she supposed. Bloody hell, that hurt!

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Jim was saying. "I've got to stop the bleeding. Steve! Put your hands right here…" She felt the pressure increase as another set of hands joined Jim's, then lessen as Jim pulled his hands away. "No, Steve, I know it's hurting her, but you've got to push harder and keep pressure on it." The pressure increased again and a little whimper escaped Peggy's lips. She was vaguely aware of Jim waving his wand over her midsection, muttering to himself about bullets before spitting out several Japanese words that she didn't know but his tone made more than clear.

"What?" Steve demanded.

"It's one of those magic bullets!" Jim spat. "It splintered into, like, eighteen pieces and I can't get 'em all. We need to get her out of here."

"Is it safe to move her?"

"Safer than staying here. She's got shrapnel in her lungs, and one of those splinters tore through her kidney. I can slow the bleeding down, but, even so, she's got fifteen minutes."

Peggy felt Steve's hands on her stomach falter.

Jacques was saying something in French that her brain didn't seem to want to translate, but it was probably good because Steve's hands steadied a little bit. They were all still talking, but it was getting harder to listen. She wondered if Bucky was alright. She hoped she hadn't messed up his leg when she numbed it. And Gabe had looked like he was breathing, and that was good…breathing was good. It was getting a little harder to do, though. It felt sort of wet and thick. _That_ probably wasn't good.

Pain shot through her abdomen again and eyes she hadn't realized she had closed snapped open. She was moving, and it was tugging on the hole in her stomach and that really hurt. Oh, but it was Steve moving her. Steve was picking her up and cradling her against his chest, and that was nice, he was so nice and warm. It was starting to get cold.

"Hey, hey, no, Peggy," Steve said. Something jostled her shoulder. Her eyes blinked open again. "Peggy, I need you to stay awake," he said, looking down at her and trying to smile, but, oh, he looked so scared! "Stay with me, okay?"

"You're bleeding," she said, finally figuring out what the line of bright red above the blue of his eyes was.

He huffed a laugh that sort of sounded like a sob, but nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay, though."

"Did we get them?" she asked.

"We got 'em," he told her.

"Good." That was good. That was…Yeah, that was good.

"No, no, no, Peggy, open your eyes!"

She did. She didn't want to, but she had to do something to make his voice stop sounding like that. "Sorry," she said. "I'm really tired."

"I know." He pulled her more closely against him. "But you hang with me a little bit longer, okay?" He leaned his head down to rest his forehead on hers. "Please?"

"Alright," she said. She couldn't do anything else when he sounded so worried.

"Okay, here we go," he told her. She heard someone shout and felt a rush of magic in the air. Steve pulled her closer to him and stepped forward, and then they were spinning and that hurt more and it was easier to stay awake then. They stepped forward into suddenly cooler air and brighter light and she shut her eyes against the glare. "Help!" Steve shouted, and she could feel him rushing forward. "We need some help!" He said more after that, but it was too fast for her to process, and she didn't think he was talking to her anyway. He still sounded worried, though.

"S'okay," she told him, patting his chest. Her eyes may or may not be open—she wasn't sure—but he'd asked her to stay awake, so she was. " 'm still awake."

He laughed a little shakily and kissed her on the forehead. "That's my girl," he whispered.

"Sir, you need to step away," a new voice said.

"No, but—" she heard Steve protest.

"We can help her, but you need to get out of the way."

She felt herself being laid down on something soft, and there were more hands and new voices and she couldn't stop another little whimper as Steve let go of her. "Ssh, it's okay." A familiar hand grabbed hers and squeezed it. Steve's fingers were sticky with blood, but they were warm and steady. "You're gonna be alright now, Peggy. Everything's gonna be okay."

It seemed like all she did was blink her eyes, but the next thing Peggy knew, she was lying in a bed in an unfamiliar, softly lit room. She felt warm and pleasantly sleepy, and she knew she should probably be in a lot of pain, but she wasn't. She was still trying to figure out where she was when Steve's face leaned into view.

"Peggy?"

She smiled. "Hello, Steve."

Relief spread across his face with a grin like sunshine. "You're awake! How are you feeling?" His thumb started rubbing gentle lines on the back of her hand that she just realized he was holding.

She considered. "Sort of heavy," she decided. She felt like she was sinking down into the mattress.

Steve huffed a soft laugh. "That's the medicine they gave you. Does anything hurt?" he asked, leaning in and resting a gentle hand on her arm.

She shook her head. "No. Is everyone alright?" The weight pressing her into the mattress was starting to tug on her eyelids too, but she needed to know. Steve had a bandage taped to his forehead above his right eye, but looked otherwise alright.

Steve nodded, getting up from his seat to sit on the mattress beside her. "Gabe and Dugan are downstairs and should be fine in another couple of hours. Bucky's over there," he continued, twisting a bit to point to the side. Peggy imagined that if she could sit up, she would see Bucky in the next bed over. "Doc says he'll be walking again tomorrow. Everyone else is fine." He looped an arm over her shoulders and started rubbing his hand up and down her arm. She sighed contentedly and shifted a bit so she could rest her head against his leg. That felt really nice.

"And the mission?" she asked with a yawn.

"Over. Jim and Jacques and Monty destroyed Coleman's stash, and they went through all his stuff before they torched the place." He huffed a quick laugh. "Jacques even got my motorcycle back somehow—through the fireplace and everything." He smiled, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "And they got a nice big pile of intel for you to look through when you're feeling better. So stop worrying, okay?" He rested one large hand on her forehead, and she sighed happily as her eyes closed. "Get some sleep, huh?" He brushed her hair back off of her forehead, and she fell asleep to the gentle motion of his fingers carding through her hair and the soft sound of him humming something slow and sweet.

When she woke up again, she was feeling much more clear-headed. The light in the room suggested it was nearly the end of the day. "Hey, there she is," came a voice that wasn't Steve's from where Steve had been sitting. She turned her head and saw Bucky sitting in a wheelchair next to her bed and smiling at her. "How you feeling?"

"Much better," she said. She pushed herself up carefully to sit against her pillows, noting only a dull ache as her muscles moved instead of a stabbing pain. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm great," he said, patting his bandaged leg. "Should be up and at 'em the same time you are."

"Where are we?" she asked, looking around. She hadn't thought this was the infirmary at Hogwarts, and now that she was more coherent and could actually look around, she was right.

"St. Mungo's," Bucky replied. At her puzzled look, he continued. "We couldn't apparate out of the house, but Jacques pointed out that we could go out the fireplace same as the other guys came in. I guess it was easier to come through the fireplace in the emergency room here than someone's office at school." He shrugged. "I wasn't in the room for that part."

Peggy nodded. "Steve said something about being here overnight?"

Bucky nodded. "Well, last night and tonight, but, yeah. Dugan and Gabe were cleared to go home this afternoon, but you and me got the magical bullet wounds, so it takes a little longer."

"Have I been asleep all day?"

"I think so. I mean, I was out for most of the morning, so I couldn't tell you," Bucky replied. The smile fell from his face, and he looked at her with a softness she'd only ever seen him use on Steve and Rebecca. "It was kind of close there for a while," he told her quietly. "You scared us, Pegs."

Warmth flooded through her chest and she reached over and grabbed his hand. "I'm sorry. But I'm alright now. I trust my boys to take good care of me."

Bucky smiled warmly and squeezed her hand. "I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm glad you are too. And speaking of my boys," Peggy said with a smile. "Where are the rest of them?"

Bucky smiled. "Dugan and Gabe did stop in before they headed back to school, but Phillips wanted everyone in, so they're all waiting for us back there. Well, except for Steve," he added, hooking his thumb back in the direction of his bed. Peggy leaned forward carefully to look around him and bit back a laugh. Steve was sprawled very ungracefully across the top of Bucky's bed, dead asleep and snoring softly. Bucky grinned. "Apparently, he sat up worrying about you and me all night last night, which should come as a surprise to no one, but the Healer was adamant that he didn't want another one of us to have to fix up, so he had the nurse slip him something when she brought him dinner." Bucky paused and smirked. "I might have helped her a little."

Peggy did laugh then. "He's not going to be happy when he wakes up."

"Oh, no," Bucky agreed. "He's going to be _pissed_. But he'll only have missed one night of sleep instead of two. So…" He shrugged and smiled. "Speaking of dinner, you hungry? The nurse told me to call her when you woke up so you could eat."

"Starving, actually," Peggy realized. She supposed it had been a full day since she'd eaten anything. Bucky rang for the nurse, and she arrived and shooed Bucky off to the side, pulling the curtain around Peggy's bed so she could examine her and change her bandages before she ate. Peggy held her shirt up out of the way and watched as the nurse peeled off the old bandages and cleaned the wound. The skin around the bullet hole was red, swollen and sensitive to the touch, but all back in one piece, while the hole itself was covered with a knot of pink, tender scar tissue. The nurse thought it might leave a bit of a mark, but she rubbed some dittany and murtlap on it before covering it up again to help the skin heal.

"Should be right as rain tomorrow, love," she declared, evidently pleased with Peggy's progress. "How about some dinner, then?" She brought her a tray of food and a vial of potion for her to drink when she was done.

Peggy sat and talked with Bucky while she ate, looking over at Steve and laughing whenever he let out a particularly loud snore. "He do that often?" she wondered.

"Sometimes," Bucky replied. "It was this loud when he was little, too, so that's one thing the serum didn't change."

She felt herself growing tired again after she took the potion. Bucky took her tray and set it on the table, then made sure she didn't need anything before wheeling himself around to the bed on the other side of hers and maneuvering himself into it. "Little punk took my bed," he said, nodding with a smile at Steve. "Real nice to make the guy with leg wound have to move over."

Peggy laughed. "I suppose that's what you get for drugging him."

"Fair enough," Bucky agreed. He finally seemed to get comfortable and quit shifting around. "G'night, Peggy," he told her with a smile.

"Good night, Bucky."

"Night, Stevie," he called across Peggy's bed. Steve snored and shifted and hummed a little, and Peggy smiled and shut her eyes.

* * *

_So, France is still not being good to the team, but everyone made it out alright. I mean, more or less. A little more recovery time, and they'll all be okay. Hope you all have a good weekend! I'd love it if you'd drop a note and let me know what you're thinking of the story so far._


	56. The Gray Plague

_Now that everyone's healed up from Paris, it's time for another mission, which probably means they'll be getting into more trouble. Another sneaky little Hydra plot is afoot, and Steve is going to have to push the limits of what the serum can do.  
_

* * *

Peggy and Bucky had been cleared to go back to school, and after another couple of days, Nurse Rains declared them both fit for active duty again. Steve was kind of skeptical about that, and was glad they didn't have any missions coming up immediately to test it. He wasn't aware of how badly he was hovering over the two of them—he thought he was just making sure they were okay—until Peggy threatened to turn him into a cat again if he didn't back off.

"I'm not made of glass, Steve," she snapped, slapping his hand away from her arm. "I can walk up the bloody stairs without hurting myself."

"Sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, I…" He shook his head. He knew magic could heal a lot of things, and that the Healers at St. Mungo's were more than capable, and that she was fine. He knew she was fine. He just couldn't shake the image of that hole in her stomach, blood that was darker than it should have been pumping out of it way too fast. Couldn't shake the feeling of her blood coating his hands, warm and slick, or the way she shivered in his arms. Couldn't stop hearing her little whimpers of pain or the way her breathing started to gurgle as blood got into her lungs.

Her face softened. "I know it was scary, what happened," she said. "But I'm okay now. I really am."

"Peggy, you almost died," he said softly. "Right there in my arms. I don't know what I…" His voice had started to shake, so he stopped and swallowed hard. He couldn't imagine his life without her in it.

She stood up on her toes and kissed him. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry." She kissed him again, then moved her hands down to pull her shirt out from where it was tucked into her skirt. "But look," she went on. Steve could feel his face heating up as she pulled her shirt up, but she took one of his hands and guided it to the side of her stomach. She placed it over the faint white line that was the only indication she'd been hurt at all—the skin beneath his fingers was cool and smooth and whole. "I'm really alright now."

He nodded and dropped his hand, looking away as she tucked her shirt back in. She was smiling at him when he looked back up. "You're very sweet," she told him. "But I'm fine. And I'm going back to work whether you want me to or not. So you can either let me get on with it, or get out of the way." She said it nicely, but she meant it, so Steve nodded.

He held open the door to Phillips' office for her and followed her to her table in the corner. "How's it coming?" he asked, nodding at the pile of papers Jim and Jacques and Monty had dug out of Coleman's house.

"Good," she said with a nod. "I've been over most of it, and there's no indication Coleman and his partners were working with Hydra. They were just wizards with no scruples and a bit of brains trying to make some money." She ducked down to open a hidden compartment under her desk that Steve knew was there but didn't know how to open. "Actually," she went on, straightening up with a slim folder in her hands. "The fact that mission went so well has been rather helpful."

"Went so well?" Steve repeated incredulously. "Peggy, you got shot!"

"Yes," she agreed. "But not because we were ambushed, or had bad intelligence, or anything like that. Whoever our spy is did not feel the need to sabotage this mission. Hydra wanted to know what Coleman and his boys had too."

Steve hadn't thought of that. He still wouldn't say things had gone _well_, but she was right about the rest of it. "So, what does that mean?"

"It means I have another puzzle piece to try to fit in with the rest of them. Not a whole picture yet, but more to work with."

They worked together for a little longer before Steve left to meet Bucky and work on homework. Bucky was a little late, on account of an earlier 'homework session' he'd been conducting with Rose McTavish. He arched a curious eyebrow at Steve when he sat down. "What, you're not going to ask me about my leg?" he asked.

"I'm trying not to hover," Steve replied.

Bucky smirked. "Peggy talked to you, didn't she?"

"She threatened to turn me into another cat."

Bucky laughed. "I was wondering where you were getting the energy to hover over both of us at once. It had to be exhausting."

"Okay, you know what?" Steve started huffily.

Bucky laughed and cut him off. "It's fine, Steve. We're all good, and we've got Defense Against the Dark Arts to work on."

Steve glowered, but hefted the book up on the table and started flipping the pages. It's not like Bucky never hovered. When something was wrong with Steve, Bucky was his freaking shadow. Where did he think he'd learned it from?

They went a couple of weeks without any kind of missions coming up, and Steve was able to shove the sight of blood all over Peggy and the fire he'd felt in Bucky's leg back into the corner of his mind where he kept the stuff he didn't like to think about. Life was normal for a little while, and the most exciting thing that happened was a Third-Year somehow managing to conjure a flock of pixies that terrorized the third floor for a couple of days before they were able to be completely rounded up.

"Alright, I know this is short notice," Peggy said, having called the team in for an unexpected Tuesday afternoon briefing. "But Phillips has got an op in Zurich happening on Thursday, and he wants you lot set up security for it."

"What sort of op?" Steve asked.

"Well, that part is mostly classified," Peggy replied.

Jim arched an eyebrow. "Classified? From the people helping him?"

"Yes," Peggy said. "It's very, _very_ delicate. I can tell you that it involves moving some people who might otherwise die if left where they were. Civilians, mostly, one of whom has information on the Tesseract."

"That's all?" Monty wondered.

"That's all I can tell you, yeah," Peggy confirmed. "I can give you a place and a time, since you'll be sorting that, but I can't tell you anything about the people."

"Okay," Steve said before anyone got too huffy about not having the whole picture. "Tell us what you can and what you need us to do."

They'd be going to Zurich in the morning. There was a safe house they could apparate into before heading to an auto parts warehouse on the south side of town. They would be using Polyjuice Potion—which none of them knew how to make but would be provided by Professor Kendall—to take on the appearance of that day's shift of security guards to get inside without a mess. (The real guards had already been apprehended and were being held in the safehouse. Their hairs would be used to complete the Polyjuice Potion, then their memories would be altered and they would be returned to work after the operation was over, none the wiser.) Once inside, they would secure and lock down the building, performing and setting up a list of spells provided by Professor Phillips that would keep the place safe, the magic undetected, and allow the place to act as a waystation for the people coming from wherever they were coming from and going wherever they were going. Once they had it all set up, S.S.R. Aurors would take over from there.

"So, we're not actually going to see any of these people?" Bucky asked.

"No," Peggy confirmed. "It's for their safety and yours. Grindelwald wants several of them, and Schmidt is after a couple as well. The fewer people they interact with on their way, the better."

"So, the Aurors taking over, they've seen the people before?" Gabe asked.

"Mm-hmm. That's why they can't do the set up—they're too busy working security."

"So, why all the Polyjuice Potion and sneaking around?" Jim wondered. "If we're not going to see or be seen anyway, why not just take out the guards inside?"

"Because this really, really secret," Peggy explained. "Any sign of magic outside the building, or any sort of trouble, will draw attention we don't want."

"Alright, cool." Jim grinned. "I've never used Polyjuice Potion before. Can I be a tall guy?"

Steve laughed. "We'll find the tallest one and let you be him."

"Sweet!" Jim exclaimed joyfully.

"And you can be the next tallest one," Steve added when Jacques protested.

The safehouse in Zurich turned out to be a little bed and breakfast run by an elderly witch and wizard. They'd been expecting the team, and showed each of the boys to a room where an unconscious security guard was tucked up asleep in a bed.

"Do not worry, Mäuschen," the old woman told Steve, reaching up to pat him on the cheek. "He sleeps, he knows nothing of this, and he will wake in his own bed unharmed." Steve _had_ been worrying about the guards they'd be replacing. They were just regular civilian, non-magical guys who had no idea about any of this, and it seemed awfully hard on them to use them this way—especially the memory-altering part—but he hadn't been the one to set up this part of the plan. He was glad it wasn't going to hurt any of them.

Steve pulled the flask of Polyjuice Potion from his bag, his lip curling up as he looked at it. It was gray and thick and sort of chunky-looking, and he was pleasantly surprised when he plucked one of his guard's hairs and dropped it in and the potion turned a smooth light blue. It tasted like mint. An odd sensation rolled out from Steve's stomach as he swallowed the potion, and it was a little unnerving to watch the muscles in his arms start to ripple. He felt the same motion moving up his legs and back, though it didn't hurt like he thought it would. His face started to itch as hair prickled and sprouted out into a thin goatee and his eyebrows got bushier. The floor got a little bit closer and his clothes got looser as he shrunk down a few inches to match the man he'd taken the hair from. He stood still for a minute after everything stopped moving, just to make sure, then turned to the mirror on the back of the door.

"Whoa," he breathed. He ran a hand along his jaw and tilted his head, watching the stranger in the mirror move. He was short and stocky now, his hair and his eyes dark, and he was at least thirty years old. He heard movement in the hallway and jumped back into the moment, remembering his time in this body was limited. He quickly changed into the guard's uniform, rolling up his own clothes to stuff into his bag for later. Rushing back downstairs, he found six strangers, dressed like him, waiting awkwardly in the foyer.

"Cap?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," he replied. Wow, his voice was deep! "Okay, um, who's who?"

They identified themselves and Steve committed their new faces to memory. They were only going to look like this for an hour, but it wouldn't do any good for him to get surprised by one of his own teammates because he forgot what they looked like.

They set out for the warehouse. The little witch waved them off, promising that she and her husband would see all the guards returned home. It felt really weird, walking in a body that wasn't his, and it took a minute to get used to the stride of his legs. A tall, thin guy with close-cropped blond hair that he remembered was Bucky came up beside him and grinned. "Finally managed to grow a beard, huh, Stevie?" he said in an unfamiliar voice.

"Shut up," Steve grumbled. Despite his increase in size and the fact that he was keeping ahead of Bucky as far as height, he had yet to have any need for a razor. Bucky, though he preferred to stay clean-shaven, had been shaving since last year, and liked to remind Steve of that periodically.

No one bothered them as they walked, though it felt like everyone should be looking at them, and they switched off with the previous shift at the factory without any hitches. Steve kept forgetting he looked different—he still felt like Steve Rogers—but the other guards simply greeted them cordially and wished them a good shift.

"Well, that was easy," Dugan said.

"Ssh!" Jim hissed. "You'll jinx us."

"Jinx what?" Dugan protested. "We're already inside."

"Yeah, but the mission's not over yet, is it?" Jim replied.

"Guys," Steve said. They stopped. "Okay, let's make sure we're the only ones here." They split off and secured the building just as they had planned. It took a while—it was a large warehouse. By the time they regrouped in the main room, Steve was starting to feel a little nauseous. The potion was wearing off, and based on the way Bucky's hair was rippling and getting longer and Gabe was starting to look a lot more tan than when Steve saw him half an hour ago, he wasn't the only one. They waited to start the next phase until they were back to themselves. It only took a couple of minutes, and it felt just as weird as the first time he changed, but it was good to be back in his own skin—although Steve's clothes were now a lot tighter than they were a few minutes ago.

They all pulled their own clothes out of their bags and changed quickly—Jim and Jacques were practically swimming in their 'tall guy' uniforms. "Okay," Monty said, pulling out the list of spells Phillips had given them. "Let's all do the big ones here first, then we can split off and do the smaller ones."

They worked their way through several spells, warding the building, removing it from the notice of passerby and cloaking magical activity. Jim stayed in the middle of the main room to set up a Secret Keeping spell—once he was done with it, the Howlies would be the only ones (aside from the Aurors who already knew the location) who could find the building until the spell came down. Once that was set, he was able to cast a tricky little transport spell that, since it was cast _inside_ the Secret Keeping location, would act as a kind of door through the spell for the people who would be transporting here. Monty stayed to keep an eye on him while he did it, and the rest of them took off to repeat the warding spells throughout the building.

"So, what, everything just sits here until tomorrow?" Dugan asked when they regrouped.

"They wanted a window to make sure the spells averting people's attention are actually doing that," Steve said. "And once the Aurors show up to switch out with us, they'll make sure it all stays going."

"I don't think I've ever been on a mission and known less about what's going on," Gabe said. "Don't we have to know where these people are going to make that transport thing Jim did work?"

"No," Jim replied. "The one I did isn't a transport spell exactly. It's more of a…bridge. The transport coming in will lock on to it so they'll get here, then it'll anchor to another one wherever they're going to get them out."

"Ils vont à Istanbul," Jacques said.

They all turned to look at him. "How the hell do you know that?" Bucky asked.

Jacques shrugged. "Je n'essayais pas de savoir," he protested. "J'entends juste des choses."

Steve didn't understand how you could learn something so classified without trying, but maybe that was just a side effect of being as sneaky as Jacques was. "You really weren't snooping around trying to figure that out?"

"Non!" Jacques protested again, offended.

"Sorry," Steve said. He looked around at the rest of the team. "I guess it goes without saying that we don't need to share that."

They all nodded in agreement.

"It makes sense, I suppose," Monty said thoughtfully. "Turkey's been very accepting of war refugees—it's a good place to hide."

"Yeah, well, let's just forget we know anyone's going to Turkey," Steve said.

Gabe chuckled. "_You_ especially," he said, pointing at Jacques. "I don't even want to think about how much Peggy would kill you if she knew you found that out."

"Ne t'inquiète pas," Jacques snorted. "Je ne suis pas un idiot."

A soft chime sounded through the air and they all turned towards the front door. "Should be the Aurors," Dugan said, looking down at his watch.

"Jacques, you wanna make sure?" Steve asked.

Jacques nodded and vanished, the rest of them moving towards the door, wands out. No one else should be able to see the building, so it was probably them, but it never hurt to double-check. Jacques reappeared and gave the affirmative, and they opened the door.

Three men came in and looked them over, eyes landing on Steve. Steve nodded to Jim, who cast a couple of deception-detecting spells, then nodded back, satisfied. Steve then walked them through the warehouse, giving them a quick rundown of the spells they'd set up. The Aurors said very little, but seemed satisfied.

"Friendly fellas, aren't they?" Gabe remarked as they left the warehouse.

"It's classified," Monty said with a shrug. "There probably wasn't much they _could_ say."

"Do you think those guards we took the hair from are back at home?" Bucky asked. It was mid-afternoon now.

"I think they're supposed to stay at the safehouse until the op is over," Steve said. "So they don't accidentally walk in on anything."

"I feel kind of bad for them," Bucky commented.

"I don't know," Dugan said. "I might could do with a two-day nap."

"Does magically induced sleep count, though?" Gabe asked. "I've always heard you wake up feeling kind of weird."

"I've always felt alright after sleeping potions and stuff," Steve said.

"Well, sure," Jim replied. "But that's like, medicine. That's different."

"So sleeping spells _do_ make you feel weird?" Bucky asked.

"Dunno," Jim shrugged. "Never been put under one."

They arrived back at the safehouse then. Steve cast the little spell the old woman had shown him that morning that would unlock the door, then he stepped inside and everything went black.

When he woke up, every muscle in his body felt like it was made of lead. His thoughts were fuzzy, like his head was stuffed to bursting with cotton, but there was a brick inside his skull, pounding the cotton flat against the inside of his head, which made it a little easier to think, even though it hurt like hell. He sat up and immediately fell over, just managing to catch himself with one hand.

"Ugggh," groaned a voice to his left that it took a second to place as Jim's. "What the hell kind of stunning spell was _that_?"

Steve forced his eyes open. Jim was sitting in front of him, cradling his head in both hands. "Stunning spell?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jim croaked. "Sure packed a wallop."

Steve looked around, noting the rest of his team huddled in groaning lumps all around him, then rather belatedly noticing the iron bars surrounding them. The room beyond was bare and dark, a single door at one end. "Where the hell are we?" he asked. He shook his head carefully, and it seemed to clear a little. The brick in his head was slowing down its pounding.

"Looks like a cage," Gabe grunted into the floor.

"Good catch, Jones," Monty groaned, sitting up against the bars behind him. "Wouldn't've spotted that otherwise."

"Shut up, you two," Bucky complained.

"Did anyone see who attacked us?" Steve asked before the argument could go any further. He hadn't seen a thing.

"Pas une chose," Jacques said.

"Nothing," Gabe agreed. "Barely made it inside and it all went black."

"I think it was some kind of automatic spell," Dugan said. "We tripped something going in, but no one would've had to be in the room to cast it."

"You don't think the couple that owned the safehouse…" Steve started.

"I don't think so," Bucky said. He grimaced. "I think I saw the old guy on the floor as I was hitting the ground. If I saw what I think I saw, he wasn't getting up again."

"So it was a setup," Steve replied. If not the couple that owned the place, then who? He shot a significant look at Bucky. They may have just found the evidence Peggy needed to prove her spy was real. "Someone had to know we were coming."

"Very astute, Captain," came a new voice. They all spun to see a tall man with graying hair standing in the doorway. "I did know you were coming."

"And who are you?" Steve asked, pushing himself to his feet. He felt the rest of his team doing the same.

"Damian Gray," he replied coolly. "Hydra special intelligence. So nice to meet you all."

"What do you want?" Steve demanded.

Gray smiled. "Straight to business. I can respect that. What I want is the location of the transport site you've been setting up. Some people will be passing through very shortly that are of great interest to me."

Jim huffed a humorless laugh. "At least we know the shielding spells work."

"Yes, Mr. Morita, congratulations," Gray said drily. "So…location?"

"No," Steve said.

Gray nodded. "I didn't think so. I just thought I'd offer you the chance to do it the easy way." He tilted his head to one side, studying them. "May as well start at the top," he decided. He flicked his wand and the door to the cage swung open. "Would you care to join me, Captain Rogers?"

Bucky made a choking sound and Steve turned his head to look at him. Little tremors were running the length of his body but he was standing completely rigid and Steve realized he couldn't move. Neither could anyone but him, it seemed. He looked back at Gray. "Not really," he said.

Gray twitched his wand and Steve felt himself being jerked forward, sliding across the floor and crashing in a heap at Gray's feet. The cage door slammed shut behind him. "I was just trying to be polite," Gray said. "I wasn't really asking." He flicked his wand down in Steve's direction. "_Crucio_," he said.

Steve didn't think he'd ever really understood what pain felt like until that moment. He twitched and he writhed and he screamed and he couldn't stop, wave after wave of agony coursing through his body. When it stopped, it took him a moment to realize it, and another to stop screaming. He panted into the stone floor, unable to do more than curl his limbs in against his body with a soft whimper. He was dimly aware of his friends yelling at Gray from somewhere behind him.

"Change your mind?" Gray asked conversationally.

Steve wasn't sure he wouldn't start screaming again if he opened his mouth, so he just glared at Gray and shook his head. Then he did open his mouth and he did start screaming as Gray flicked his wand at him again. Never, not in all the beatings he'd taken, the broken bones and illnesses he'd suffered through, the growing he'd done in Erskine's machine, or any of the battles he'd been in, never had anything hurt like this. Every cell in his body was exploding, burning, stabbing, and the world was starting to go white around the edges.

He didn't know how long it lasted, but he couldn't hold back a sob of relief when it stopped. He was shaking, crying, gulping in huge lungfuls of air to cool his burning throat. Gray crouched down next to him and Steve rolled his head to look at him. "Had enough yet?"

Steve fixed Gray with as stern a look as he could muster. "I could do this all day."

Gray considered him. "Yes," he said at last. "I believe you could. And while it would be fun, I'm afraid I don't have that kind of time." He straightened up. "Let's try something else."

He flicked his wand again and Steve went skidding across the stone floor back into the cage, barreling into the legs of someone who didn't fall over only because Gray had immobilized them all again. "Mr. Jones," he said, beckoning with his free hand. "Your turn."

Steve looked up and saw Gabe swallow hard, but he walked out of the cell and towards Gray. The door of the cage slammed shut again and the legs Steve was laying against moved back, arms reaching down to help him sit up.

"Stevie?" Bucky asked, looking at him worriedly. He shook his sleeve over his hand to wipe away the blood Steve hadn't realized was coming out of his nose.

"M'okay," he said, nodding. Yeah, it hurt like hell, but it was starting to fade. "Get me up."

Bucky took his hand and levered him carefully to his feet. He leaned against the side of the cage as his muscles continued to tremble, but he stayed upright.

"Now," Gray said when Gabe reached him. "I will offer you the chance, Mr. Jones, to give me what I want." Gabe glowered and said nothing. Gray nodded. "This is really more for your Captain anyway. Let's see if all that compassion Doctor Erskine thought was so important is really in there." He flicked his wand down at Gabe. "_Crucio_," he said again.

As much as it had hurt before, it hurt even worse watching Gabe writhing and screaming in a ball of agony on the floor. Everyone was yelling again, but Steve was just standing there watching in horror. He could make it stop. One sentence and he could make it stop. But he _couldn't_. He wanted to close his eyes, to pull his hands up over his ears and drown out Gabe's pained screams, but he didn't. If he wasn't going to stop it, then he owed it to Gabe not to turn away.

The minutes seemed to drag on into hours, but Gray finally stopped. He looked down at Gabe, who was shaking and crying softly, then back up at Steve. "Well, Captain?"

Steve swallowed down a painful lump in his throat. Gabe raised his eyes to look at him and minutely shook his head. "I can't," Steve breathed. "I'm so sorry, Gabe, I can't." Gabe blinked, nodded slowly, absolution in his eyes.

"Are you sure?" Gray asked, flicking his wand and making Gabe scream again. Steve said nothing. "Really?" Still no response. Gray did it one more time, watching Steve curiously, then stopped. Gabe was sobbing into the floor. "Interesting," Gray said. "Perhaps you have more of a backbone than I gave you credit for."

He flicked his wand in the direction of the cage, and Steve felt something invisible and solid grab him in a vice grip, keeping him from moving as the door swung open and Gabe skidded across the floor into his feet. Gray twitched his wand again and Jacques flew forward, the cage door slamming behind him with a clang. Steve shivered as mobility returned.

"Let's try a different approach," Gray said. He waved his wand and Jacques staggered and swayed where he stood. "_Imperio_," Gray muttered. Jacques' eyes glazed over and a knot formed in Steve's stomach. "You know the question, Mr. Dernier. Answer it."

Jacques' mouth opened, then closed, opened and closed again. He closed his eyes and leaned his head to one side, then opened his mouth and started speaking very rapidly. It was very fast, almost too fast for Steve, and he didn't recognize a majority of the words. Gabe, however, chuckled weakly from where he was laying at Steve's feet. "You tell 'im, Jacques," he said.

Gray was watching Jacques with one eyebrow arching in amusement. He flicked his wand and Jacques went silent, blinking clarity back into his eyes. Gray clicked his tongue in disapproval. "You really must watch your language, Mr. Dernier. There are, fortunately, no ladies present." He repeated the flick of the wand that froze them all and sent Jacques back into the cage.

"I must applaud you in your training, gentlemen," Gray said, and he did sound impressed. "Fortunately, I have more options open to me than Unforgivable Curses. But which one…"

Even though he couldn't move, Steve shivered as Gray cast a deeply appraising look over all of them. He didn't know what he was going to do next, but he didn't think it was good. Especially not with the way Gray was smiling like that.

"Mr. Barnes," he said finally. "Let's take a walk, you and I." He motioned with his wand and yanked Bucky forward. Bucky came to a stop next to him, still upright but clearly unable to move. Gray looked back to the cage. "We'll be back in a little while. I would encourage you all to do some thinking while we're away." He motioned with his wand again and started walking, tugging Bucky unevenly along behind him. The door at the far end of the room closed behind them and the cage door slammed shut, allowing Steve and the others to move again.

"Gabe, are you okay?" Steve asked, crouching down beside him. His nose and one of his ears were still bleeding sluggishly, but he'd stopped shaking. Steve's eyes darted up quickly to the other side of the cage, where Jim was checking on Jacques.

"I'll live," Gabe said, accepting the offered hand that pulled him into a sitting position.

"Gabe, I'm so sorry," Steve said.

"It's alright," Gabe told him. "You did the right thing." The smile he gave him was small, but genuine. "Really," he added.

"Guys, what are we gonna do?" Dugan asked. They were wandless, weaponless, and had no idea where they were. Steve wasn't sure they were even in Zurich anymore. His eyes went to the door where Bucky had disappeared, the worried knot in his stomach twisting into several more.

"Any ideas?" he asked, looking around the cage.

"Could we lie?" Monty asked.

Steve shook his head. "Guy like this, he might buy the lie, but he wouldn't let us go before he checked it out. Then he'd just come back and kill us."

"You think the op's still going?" Gabe wondered. "I mean, we don't show up back at home, and if Bucky was right and the old couple's dead, someone's going to notice something's fishy."

"It could go ahead," Jim replied. "They don't need us for it to work. I mean, hopefully someone will start looking for us, but they should be able to tell pretty quickly that the place is still secure and the Aurors on duty could go ahead with it. It would be Phillips' call."

"He might cancel it, depending on how safe he's being with these people," Steve said. He didn't know all the safety measures that were in place, but with what he _did_ know, it's what he would do.

"Depends how crucial it is those folks get out of wherever they are," Dugan pointed out. "Peggy did say they could die if they stayed."

"What I wanna know," Jim said. "Is how Gray knows so much about us. I mean, you, sure," he said, looking over at Steve. "You're the famous one. But he knows all of our names."

Steve considered for a moment. He supposed there was no harm in sharing Peggy's suspicions now. Especially since they seemed to be confirmed. "It's been looking for a while like there's a spy in the S.S.R.," he said. "Enough things going wrong, bad intel getting around…all those ops where teams keep losing people. That's got to be what happened here." There couldn't be any other explanation for it. "Someone tipped him off we were coming, and not just that there would be an S.S.R. team, but us specifically. Gave him names and everything. The person on the inside doesn't know where the location for this op is, but they know it's going on, and they know about the safehouse. So they tell Gray we're coming, but have him wait to grab us until it's all set up. That increases the odds of the mission going through—like Dugan said, they may not have any other choice but to move these people now. And mid-mission is Hydra's only window to catch whoever these people are."

The others nodded slowly, letting Steve's declaration sink in.

"That explains how he knows so much," Monty said. "But that doesn't get us any closer to getting out of here."

"Jim, you want to check out the lock?" Steve asked. He knew the odds of picking a magically sealed lock with just a paperclip weren't good, but they may as well try. Jim nodded and started carefully examining the lock. "We're going to have to use force to get out of here," Steve continued. "Without magic, we don't have many other options."

They spent a while going over every inch of the cage, searching for a weakness. Jacques found one bar that was rusted across the base, but though Steve kicked at it with all his might, it wouldn't budge. He even wrapped his hands around two of the bars and pulled as hard as he could, but no dice. He couldn't bend _every_ kind of metal. Or maybe they were magically reinforced. They continued their inspection, and Steve could tell by the looks on their faces that they, like him, were all trying very hard not to think about what was happening to Bucky and why he was gone so long.

According to Jim's watch, it was five hours later when Gray returned with Bucky. Steve's initial relief that Bucky was alive and upright vanished when they got close enough for him to see Bucky's face. His eyes were glassy and out of focus and his jaw hung slack. His skin was noticeably paler than it should have been, and, though his face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, he was shivering. Gray's hand clamped around his upper arm was clearly the only thing keeping him vertical.

"Bucky?" Steve asked. Bucky blinked but didn't respond. Steve turned his gaze up to Gray. "What did you do?" he growled.

Gray glanced sideways at Bucky's face. "Oh, the spell? He was just being difficult, but I wouldn't worry about it. It'll wear off in a few minutes." He looked back at the cage, flicking his wand and immobilizing them once more as the door swung open. He shoved Bucky forward and slammed the door, but didn't unfreeze them fast enough for anyone to catch Bucky before he hit the ground. As soon as he could move, Steve dropped to his knees next to Bucky and carefully rolled him over so he wasn't lying face down on the floor, resting Bucky's head on his thigh. Bucky groaned and coughed, still shivering. His skin was feverishly warm. "I did give him a little something, though, and if I were you, _that's_ what I would worry about," Gray continued. "It's a special little formula of ours, and while the timing's not as precise as it could be…" He looked at his watch theatrically. "By this time tomorrow, he'll be dead."

Steve's heart dropped into his stomach. "What the hell did you do?!" he demanded.

"The rest of you won't be very far behind him," Gray added as if Steve hadn't spoken. He smirked. "It's terribly contagious." He gave them a moment to take that in before going on. "Thanks to your S.S.R. boys, there actually is an antidote for this, and I could be persuaded to share it with you. I'm afraid the price has gone up, though. I still want the location of the building, but now I also want where everyone is being sent from there." He moved back to the door. "I'll give you some time to think about it, shall I?"

"No, wait!" Steve called, but the door was already slamming behind him. Bucky coughed again, a deeper cough that jerked his head up off of Steve's leg, and Steve looked back down, then over at Jim. "Jim?" he asked. Was Gray telling the truth? He'd obviously done _something_ to Bucky, but had he really…

Jim moved over and knelt in front of Bucky. With Steve behind him, he was able to prop him up into a sitting position and set to carefully examining him, looking into his eyes, feeling places on his neck and the back of his head.

"Well?" Steve asked after a minute.

"He was right about the spell," Jim said. "It's some weird blend of a stunning spell and the Confundus curse. It threw him for a loop, but it's already wearing off."

"What about…" Steve asked, not really sure how to say the rest of it. It was good that whatever spell Gray had hit Bucky with wasn't going to hurt him, but that wasn't really what he was worried about.

Jim sighed deeply and didn't look up. "Give me a minute," he said. "It's harder without magic."

Why did Steve get the feeling Jim was stalling? "Jim," he pressed.

Jim sighed again. He stayed kneeling in front of Bucky, looking up hesitantly to meet Steve's gaze. "It…" He looked away again. "I think it…" He sighed again and looked back at Steve. "It's that special souped-up strain of TB that Hydra developed."

Steve flinched like someone had punched him as the world screeched to a halt. No. No, it couldn't be, it… "The one—" He swallowed hard. "The one that—" He couldn't say it. Couldn't get the words out.

"Yeah," Jim said softly.

"Are you sure?" Steve croaked.

Jim nodded. "He's got all the signs of TB, but it's way too fast to be the normal kind. It—well, we've seen enough of their version to know it takes about twenty-four hours to…" He didn't seem able to say it either. "And Gray was right, it's contagious as hell. We all got it as soon as Bucky came back into the room."

"Wouldn't Gray have it too, then?" Monty asked, and Steve quit listening as Jim explained about quarantines and protective charms and other ways Gray was probably keeping himself safe. All he could do was breathe, and even that was hard right now, his breath coming in jerky gasps as his chest heaved unevenly.

"Hey, Cap?" Steve blinked and realized Jim was trying to talk to him again.

"Yeah?" he rasped.

"There is a cure for this thing. He was right about that too."

"Uh huh," Steve responded. He knew that. It had come too late for his ma, but the S.S.R. _had_ developed a cure. It was out there. They could get it. But it was out there. And they were in here.

There was silence in the cage for several minutes as everyone absorbed this grim news. Steve also got the feeling no one was talking because they were waiting for him, and he, he was the Captain, they needed him to be strong right now, and he could do it, he could do it, he just…he just needed to remember how to breathe first.

"Steve?" He looked down and Bucky was looking up at him, blinking his way back from wherever he'd gone.

"Bucky!" he said, shifting to get a better look at him. He felt the others lean in closer. "Are you okay?"

Bucky cast his eyes around the cage, taking stock of where he was, then shook his head. "He did somethin' to me, Steve," he said, and his voice would have sounded calm to anyone but Steve. His eyes went wide and he started shoving at Steve's chest. "No, you need to get away, I—" He broke off with a violent cough and the knots that hadn't left Steve's stomach twisted even tighter as he watched blood spatter all over his hand. Bucky looked down at his hand in dismay and then back up at Steve. "You're gonna catch it. You have to—"

"We already have it, Sarge," Jim said, leaning in a little closer.

Bucky's eyes darted from Jim to Steve, then he squeezed them shut with a grimace and looked like he was about to throw up. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It's not your fault, Buck," Steve told him, rubbing a hand up and down his back. Jacques leaned forward with a handkerchief and Steve took it with a grateful nod, wiping the blood from Bucky's hand. "It would have happened no matter which of us he took out there."

Bucky nodded slowly, trying and sort of succeeding at holding in another cough. " 'm still sorry."

Steve patted his back. Okay. Okay, he could freak out about this later. "Jim," he said, looking up. "What should we be expecting here?"

Jim nodded. "Fever, chills, coughing. General feeling like crap that's just gonna get worse. Weakness and exhaustion are gonna kick in, make it hard to do anything. That's probably why Gray left. Give us some time to really feel this, put the pressure on to answer his questions."

"What kind of time frame are we looking at?"

Jim considered. "Well, twenty-four hours for it to run its course. I'm thinking anywhere between six and ten hours before our energy tanks and it gets hard to do much."

Steve arched an eyebrow. "That's a big window."

"Yeah, well, it's an experimental disease."

Steve looked around at the rest of his team. Outwardly, they looked calm, looking to him and waiting for instructions. The air was humming with a nervous tension, though. They were scared. Their line of work was dangerous, but being prepared for death in combat was one thing. Sitting around and slowly feeling yourself start to fall apart was a whole different ball game.

"Alright," Steve said. "Things haven't really changed. We need to get out of here. Maybe a little faster than before, but…" He shrugged. "Ideas?"

He felt some of the tension lift as they all had something else to focus on. Gabe and Jacques started muttering to one another in French, while Monty was studying the ceiling of the cage, looking for flaws they may not have found earlier. "Dugan, help me check out the hinges on this door," Jim said, scooting over towards the door of the cage. "People don't always secure these as well as they do the locks."

Steve tried to think of something while his friends worked, but he kept getting distracted by Bucky coughing. "Stevie, I'm really sorry," Bucky said.

"Buck, it's alright, it's not your fault," Steve reassured him.

Bucky shook his head. "No, not that. I mean—" Another violent cough. "This," he rasped, gesturing at his chest and throat. "It's, I mean, you've already had to go through this, I don't wanna—"

"It's okay, Buck," Steve said, resting a hand on his chest. "Yeah, this is reminding me of what happened to Ma." There wasn't really any denying that. It hurt, and it hurt a lot. "But you know what else it's doing?"

Bucky shook his head.

"It's making me mad. Hydra's not going to do this to me twice. We're getting out of here. All of us. Alive. And I'm gonna pound Gray into the pavement, and we're all going to be fine." He wasn't sure how that was going to happen yet, but it would.

Bucky smiled tiredly. " 'f anyone can do it, you can," he rasped, reaching up a hand to pat Steve's chest.

The renewed searching of the cage didn't turn up anything new. Jim and Dugan did find the hinges on the door to be less secure than the locks, but still secure enough they couldn't budge them. Steve went after it when they couldn't get anything, but the pins were in too tight and the metal was bulky and strong enough that he still couldn't do anything.

They set to making and evaluating other plans instead. Ideas were thrown out for various deceptions they could try, or ways they could somehow move and get out the door while it was open. They even toyed with the idea of giving Gray what he wanted and then taking him out before he could share the information, and though they kept circling back to it, they kept rejecting it as too risky—he could wait to verify the information before letting them out or giving them the antidote, or there could be more people on the other side of the door who could get away with the intel even if they managed to get him.

Their ideas got more and more desperate as the hours went by. They also began noticing the onset of the symptoms Jim had described. It started off with slow coughs and shivers, growing more intense as the time passed, lethargy setting in. Dugan, somewhat oddly, given his size, seemed to be taking it the worst—by the end of the fourth hour, he'd coughed up what looked like half the blood in his body and was having trouble staying awake. Bucky, having a five hour jump on the rest of them, was looking pretty rough. He kept fading in and out of consciousness, and though his skin continued to grow warmer, he just shook harder, curling up and shivering in a little ball under the jacket Steve had laid over the top of him.

Steve, for his part, didn't feel that bad. A headache was pounding behind his eyeballs, and there had been a persistent, nagging tickle at the back of his throat for a couple of hours now, but there had been no blood, and he didn't feel feverish.

"It's the serum," Jim told him, turning to cough into his elbow. "That whole protective cell whatever. You've still got it, it's just…slower."

That didn't really make Steve feel any better. Actually, it sent a stab of panic through his stomach at the realization that he was going to die, but he was going to have to watch everyone else do it first. The panic turned to nausea and he swallowed hard as an image of his ma floated across his vision. Her hands had felt so cold, her fingers trembling underneath his. It had broken him, watching her die. Watching it happen to everyone else might kill him before the disease did.

Time ticked on, and Steve started to wonder how much of a schedule Gray was really on if he was going to let them sit this long. That was probably why he wanted to know where the refugees were headed next. They might even be there already. Steve didn't know what time Phillips' op was happening. And maybe it was Thursday already. He didn't know.

He _did_ feel pretty awful, though. This thing was working on him slower, but Jim was right, it was still working. His head was pounding again, and his muscles ached. He was starting to feel cold, but he couldn't bring himself to take his jacket back from Bucky. Bucky whimpered, tossing uneasily in his sleep before coughing and spraying blood over the floor. "Hang in there, Buck," Steve whispered, reaching down to pat his shoulder. But hang in there for what? He still didn't know what he was going to do.

When Gray finally did return, Steve groaned and flinched back from the light that came through the door behind him and stabbed into his eyeballs, making the pounding in his head worse. Gray approached the cage, walking irritatingly slowly, seemingly very interested in studying them. Everyone who was awake sat up and glared at him.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Gray said. "How are we feeling today?"

"Go to hell," Monty spat.

Gray clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Mind your manners, Mr. Falsworth. Just because you're feeling unwell is no cause for rudeness. Have you considered my offer?" His eyes raked over them all but rested on Steve.

"Monty already answered you," Bucky rasped, sitting up and surprising them all—they thought he'd been asleep. "He said go to hell."

"So, that's a 'no', is it?" Gray asked. "I must say, Mr. Barnes, you're not looking well at all. I would think, out of all of you, you'd be the first to cooperate—you will be going long before the rest of them do."

Bucky sniffed, coughed, almost fell over. "You think gettin' me sick is gonna make me give you anything, you're barkin' up th' wrong tree. 've had a lot worse 'n this."

"Yes, I suppose you have," Gray said with a smile that Steve didn't like at all. "Although, Arnim didn't really want anything from you back then, did he?" He twitched his wand and yanked Bucky up against the bars at the front of the cage. "If you had the option to make him stop, would you have taken it?" He stepped forward and pulled a knife from his boot, kneeling and tracing a lazy circle across the front of Bucky's shirt. "As I'm sure you remember, there is an awful lot inside of there I could play with."

Steve grabbed Bucky's shoulder and yanked him away from the bars and against his chest, a protective arm shielding his torso. "You're not going to touch him again."

Bucky's hand was clenched in a death grip on Steve's wrist, and Steve could feel him shaking with more than just cold, but he continued to glare resolutely at Gray. "Go to hell," he snarled.

Gray sheathed the knife and stood up, raising his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "As you wish. I'm not the one who's running out of time here." He looked around at the rest of the team—Dugan, who was asleep on the ground, Monty, who was leaning up against the bars and shaking, Gabe, who was pale and sweating, holding on to Jacques who was shivering and sleeping fitfully on his lap, and Jim who was coughing into his elbow. "What you're feeling now is only going to get worse, you know. It's a very unpleasant way to go—as I'm sure Captain Rogers remembers," he added with a smirk, and it was all Steve could do not to launch himself howling at the bars. He wasn't going to give Gray that satisfaction. Bucky tightened his grip on Steve's wrist.

"Any takers?" Gray asked, looking them all over once more. "Though the offer was originally extended to Captain Rogers, I will happily accept an answer from any of you. I will even be generous enough to share the antidote with all seven of you, even if only one of you cooperates." No one said anything, and Gray inclined his head serenely. "Very well. I'll come back again and check later. In the meantime, if any of you change your minds, just give me a shout."

He left and they all sat in silence for a moment, listening to the fading echo of the door slamming. Steve sighed. "Guys, I don't know how to get us out of this," he admitted.

"It's not your fault, Captain," Monty said gently. He nodded resolutely. "We've got time to figure something out yet."

"And if we don't, they gotta be looking for us at home by now," Gabe pointed out. "Maybe Peggy'll come rescue us." He grinned. "She's good at that."

Steve did manage a chuckle at that. They lapsed into silence again, broken only by coughs or groans. Steve kept trying to think of something they could do, but it was getting harder to get his brain to focus. He kept drifting off, and he didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until something slammed into his chest and knocked him against the bars he was leaning on. Bucky was gasping for air and coughing so hard he was jerking up and then thumping against Steve, reminding Steve of the seizure he'd had after the sirens. He moved to readjust the way he was holding him so he was sitting up and leaning back a little bit, and his breathing eased then. He didn't wake, though. Steve was only distantly aware of Bucky's blood spattered all over his hand, reaching down and wiping it absently on the leg of his pants. He looked up and saw Jim watching him sympathetically.

"How much time do we have?" he asked, his voice rough in his throat.

Jim looked down at his watch. "You and me? About ten hours." He looked over worriedly at Bucky. "He's got about five."

"Did Gray come back while I was asleep?"

Jim shook his head.

Steve wasn't sure why it mattered. He wasn't going to get anything out of Gray unless he gave him what he wanted. And Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't. Innocent people's lives depended on him keeping his mouth shut.

What about their lives, though? The Howling Commandos, they were Steve's team. It was his job to keep them safe. And he could. Just a few little words, and he could save their lives. They might hate him for it. But they'd be alive. He stared around the cage. Dugan was curled up in the corner, looking paler and smaller than Steve had ever seen him. Monty was huddled up against him, shaking and trying to stay warm. Jacques was still asleep, snoring and coughing in Gabe's lap, and Gabe was awake, though his eyes were distant, lost in thoughts uninterrupted by the coughs that wracked his body and splattered blood across his hand. Jim was looking kind of gray, breathing like it hurt and staring down at his watch, watching the last seconds of his life tick away. A wave of nausea rolled through Steve's stomach. These guys weren't just his team. They'd been with him, cared about him, since before he was big and strong and famous. They had his back and followed him to places no sane person would go because they believed in him. They were his friends. His family.

Bucky shivered in Steve's arms, and the nausea surged even stronger. Bucky. Bucky was dying and Steve could do something to stop it and he wasn't. What the hell kind of person did that make him? Bucky had been there since before Steve could remember, hurting when he hurt and putting himself in harm's way to save Steve again and again. Bucky had been there for _everything_, pulling Steve out of every hole he'd fallen into, never hitting back and piecing Steve back together every time he fell apart. He was Steve's protector, teacher, healer, anchor, shelter, _brother_.

Anger surged through Steve's chest, hot and powerful. Hydra had already taken his ma. She'd died slow and painful and all Steve had been able to do was watch. And now they were coming for the rest of Steve's life. The same tricks, the same pain, the same result. No. Steve growled, and he felt the bars behind him shake a little as angry magic coursed through his veins. There was no way in HELL he was letting Hydra do this again. They'd taken enough from him.

"Stevie?" Bucky rasped. Steve looked down and Bucky's glassy, pain-filled eyes were staring back up at him, worry swimming in their steel-blue depths. "W's wrong?"

Steve laughed humorlessly. "What's wrong? _Everything_ is wrong, Bucky. Everything. But I'm going to fix it."

The worry didn't leave Bucky's eyes. "Wha're y' gonna do?"

Steve swallowed hard. "I'm gonna tell him."

Bucky coughed, tried to sit up straighter, failed. "No," he said desperately. "Stevie, y' can't do that."

"I have to, Buck."

"Steve, people are gonna die."

"People are dying in here!" he snapped. He closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry," he said more quietly. "But I can't…I can't do this, Buck," he said in a small voice. "I sat and I watched while they took Ma, and I can't, I can't do that again. There wasn't anything I could do to stop it then. But there's something I can do to stop it now."

Bucky was looking at him, tears swimming in his eyes, and Steve saw nothing but sympathy there. "I'm sorry, Stevie. I'm _so_ sorry," Bucky whispered. "But you can't do this." He moved one hand to grab Steve's wrist. "Promise me you won't."

Steve was quiet for a long minute, fighting back the tears pooling in his own eyes. Steve knew that if he did this, there wouldn't be any going back. People would die, and their blood would be on Steve's hands for the rest of his life. Consequences would come down from Phillips and the S.S.R. and Steve would take them. People would hate him, despise him, call him weak and a traitor and a coward, and Steve would shoulder all of that. Because this was his world, here in this little cage. And this was the only way he knew how to save it. "I'll do everything I can," he said at last. "But I can't promise that, Buck. I can't. Not if it means saving you."

Bucky looked into his eyes, and Steve knew he understood. "I know," he breathed. "But you have to try, Stevie. Please." He fell back into unconsciousness before Steve could respond.

"I'll try," he whispered.

A couple more hours ticked by, and Steve did the best he could to stay awake, wracking his brains, but he couldn't come up with anything better than just giving Gray what he wanted. Maybe, maybe if Gray would just come back in here and talk to him, maybe he could figure something else out. But he didn't.

"Hey, Cap?" Jim said, jarring Steve's thoughts out of another fruitless plan.

"Yeah?" he croaked. His throat felt raw from all the coughing.

"Listen, if we're dying for this, then we'll die for it," Jim said. "But if we're gonna try anything, we'd better do it soon."

Steve nodded. He felt the tears prickling behind his eyes again. "Jim, I don't know what to do," he said, his voice cracking. "I can't let this happen, I…Help me!"

Just like Bucky had, Jim looked at Steve with nothing but understanding in his dark eyes. "I don't know what we can do either." He paused, coughed. He perked up a little, sudden revelation flickering across his face. "Unless…"

"Unless what?" Steve asked hopefully, latching on to whatever chance he was offering.

"I don't know how well this would work," Jim admitted. "But earlier, that was you shaking the bars, wasn't it?"

"I think so," Steve said. "I just, I was thinking about Hydra and what they're doing, and I got so mad, I…I haven't lost control of my magic since I got big like this."

Jim nodded. "We're not getting out of here without magic. And maybe we can use that."

"Jim, I can't control it. And all it did was rattle the bars a little."

"Yeah, but listen. When wizards get sick, their control on their magic gets a little shaky. That's why magical hospitals have special wards for serious magical diseases, because those bursts of uncontrolled magic can be dangerous. You're sick," he said, pointing at Steve. "And, sure, you look better than I do, but you're still dying. That's pretty far up the shaky magic scale."

"I—"

"On top of that," Jim continued. "Your magic is more powerful than anyone on this team. Maybe all of us put together. If you can get yourself to the point it's just coming out of you, it'll pack a hell of a bigger punch than any of ours would. And if you can focus it at all…" He shrugged.

"That's a lot of 'ifs'," Steve said.

"Yeah. It's all we got, though."

Steve thought. "So, what, I should just get mad?"

"Whatever you were thinking about before," Jim said. "That made you mad enough to shake the bars. Think about that, but just, like, _more_. If it makes you mad, if it makes you scared, if it makes you sad…" He huffed an apologetic smile. "Everything that sucks, basically."

"I can try," Steve said.

Jim nodded. He beckoned with his hands. "Here, move him over here," he said, nodding at Bucky. "If this does work, we want it to land on the cage, not one of us."

Steve nodded and scooted across the floor, transferring Bucky into Jim's arms, then moved away. He sat in front of the door of the cage, staring at it. He felt awfully silly at first, sitting here just trying to get mad. But Jim didn't say anything and didn't try to rush him, and slowly, he was able to get more lost in his thoughts.

He thought about his friends, sick and hurting behind him. Rage roared through his chest again as he thought about Hydra and what they did—he pictured Gray laughing and gleefully forcing his toxic 'special formula' down Bucky's throat. He pictured Zola with his hands down inside Bucky's guts, pulling things out while Bucky screamed. He pictured Mueller kicking Gabe into an unconscious, bloody mess on the floor. He pictured Jim, comatose on a magic carpet. He pictured Peggy, tied to the bedframe as a Nazi guard leered on. He pictured Jacques, nine years old and watching his family die. He pictured Arthur, frightened eyes staring up at the sky he would never see again, the remains of a Hydra spell glowing like embers in the dark hole in his torso.

Steve swallowed hard, dove deeper into the corner of his mind where he kept the things he was afraid of locked away. He thought about his friends dying, fading out one by one in this dark little cage, and panic surged through his chest. Instead of swallowing it down, he dove into it. He thought about a couple hours from now, Bucky coughing and breathing his last in his arms, his hand letting go of where it was clenched in Steve's sleeve and falling away, lifeless, just as his ma's had done. He imagined each of his teammates dying, slowly, painfully, while he looked on, helpless—Dugan fading out in his sleep, just quietly no longer breathing; Monty shivering and coughing and going still; Gabe sighing and patting Jacques on the shoulder as each of them slipped away; Jim's eyes sorrowful and apologetic as they closed one last time. He thought about Peggy, blood pouring from her stomach and choking her lungs as she slipped away while he held her. Thought about last year, and the factory, and how everyone had disappeared. He'd been so scared then, not knowing if they would come home. He was even more afraid now.

Behind the anger, behind the fear, there was a dark hole, a yawning chasm of sorrow that Bucky had pulled him out of three years ago. The anger roared, the fear swelled, and Steve stood on the edge and looked down inside—there was his ma, her hand going slack in his, her chest failing to rise with even the weakest of breaths. There was Professor Erskine, surprise lingering in his eyes even as life faded from them, blood spreading across the white lab coat he wore. There was Bucky, lost and distant on a metal gurney and then in a hospital bed, screaming in terror he couldn't escape and Steve couldn't save him from. Everything hurt, everyone around him got hurt and suffered and died, and Steve couldn't do a thing to stop it. Never. He'd never been able to stop it.

Distantly, somewhere far away from the whirlpool of rage and fear and pain he was starting to drown in, there was a voice. "Focus it, Steve, focus it!" Jim. Jim wasn't dead, not yet, but he would be soon, and Steve remembered what they were trying to do, why he was teetering on the edge of this abyss. He could feel magic rolling through him, raw and wild, pulsing with his heartbeat, and he knew he had a split second before it came exploding out in a burst of chaos. A flash of memory shot through his brain—Jim and Dugan talking about the hinge on the door—and though he wasn't sure how, was never able to put into words how he did it, he aimed the magic building up inside him and let it go.

There was a distant cracking noise and he slumped over, exhausted and drained, unable to stop shaking. Arms looped around his shoulders and for a moment he stopped trying to control his ragged breathing, his shaking limbs, the tears pouring down his face, and he just slumped into them. "It's alright, Steve, it's okay," came a voice that Steve didn't think usually said things like that.

"Jim?" he asked, lifting his head.

"Hey," Jim said. He smiled. "I think you did it."

He did it? Steve spun where he sat, gaze searching for the door. His eyes landed on the hinge, and for a moment, his heart sank. It was still intact. Then he looked closer. It was _mostly_ intact. A large crack ran its length, the metal twisting up away from the screws. Steve leaned forward and took hold of the pin, still wedged in tightly, but not near as bad as before. He took it in both hands and twisted and wriggled and tugged and his hand slipped and the pin tore a bloody gash across his palm, but that was okay because it came flying out of its setting. The hinge hung crooked now, and Steve pulled back his leg and kicked it, once, twice, then again and it clattered to the floor. He pushed himself up to his knees, swayed, grabbed on to the door for support and it moved. Steve grinned. It was still attached to the upper hinge, but was far too loose on the bottom now. The TB had taken a lot out of him, because it took longer than it should have, but he shoved and kicked and wrenched the door up until the bottom of it was a tangled mess, with more than enough space to crawl out underneath.

Jim was watching in awe, beaming. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Gabe was the only one they could wake up enough to get any coherency out of, so they decided the three of them should go first and find Gray and hopefully a wand or something before they tried to move everyone else. Steve crawled under the mangled remains of the door and got to his feet and promptly fell over again—it took both Gabe and Jim to catch him, and they almost all three hit the floor.

"Easy there, Cap, easy," Jim said, patting his chest. He and Gabe leaned him up against the bars of the cage and he took a minute to get his feet back under him and let the room stop spinning. He realized he hadn't stood up in several hours, and every muscle in his body felt weak and shaky. He couldn't get his hands to stop trembling. The disease was really taking its toll now, but it was more than that. His emotional foray into uncontrolled magic had drained him—probably would have done it on a good day, but now it was almost enough to shove him over the edge into unconsciousness.

"I shoulda thought of that," Jim said. "Doing magic like that's not real good for you."

"You had other things on your mind," Steve rasped. "And it's not like I wouldn't've done it if I'd known that."

"Are you gonna be good to do this?" Gabe asked.

Steve knew he was in terrible shape, and on any other mission, he would have benched himself instead of running the risk of being a liability and putting other people in danger. But this wasn't any other mission, and he didn't have any other choice. He nodded. "I can do it." Adrenaline was coming in and steadying his limbs now. Who knew how long he had, but he'd give it as much as he could.

They moved for the door, pausing to listen carefully in case Gray came bursting through it unexpectedly. They were only a little surprised to discover that the door wasn't locked. "Guess if no one's supposed to get out of the cage, you don't think you need to worry about the door," Gabe mused.

They eased into the next room, which seemed to be deserted. It was a long, low room with no windows, filled with long tables and cauldrons and glass containers and other lab equipment. Steve wondered if Gray had mixed up the enhanced tuberculosis himself. A shiver of anger ran through him as he wondered if Gray had been one of the ones to create it in the first place.

"What's our play here?" Jim asked.

"We need to find Gray and take him out. And anyone else that's here," Steve said. He didn't look forward to the idea of searching the building in their condition, but what option did they have?

"Guys," Gabe said, coughing and pointing to a table in the corner.

"Oh, hello, beautiful," Jim crooned, moving over and snatching up his wand from the pile of their gear.

Steve coughed and swallowed down the iron tang of blood, but he smiled. That would help.

Gabe picked up his wand, steadying himself on the table. "I don't know about you two, but if I try to apparate out of here, I think I'm gonna tear myself in half."

Steve and Jim nodded. They still needed to find the cure.

Gray returned then, and Steve only had a second to savor the look of utter shock on his face before Gray recovered and swung up his wand and fired a bolt of something that shattered the stone in the wall behind them. They all ducked (or fell) out of the way, scrambling to roll behind the tables and out of the line of fire. Steve snatched the nearest wand off the table and rolled behind a shelf. He heard Gray cry out as something Gabe shot at him found its mark, but he didn't go down. Their magic was tenuous at best right now, and Steve knew it. Gray knew it too. There were three of them, but they weren't going to last long. All he had to do was take cover and wait them out.

"Alright," Steve muttered. "Screw this." Instead of aiming at Gray, he took aim at a large shelf filled with binders and rolls of parchment behind him and yanked. The shelf came crashing down, shattering a table full of equipment and pinning Gray to the floor. Steve got up as quickly and carefully as he could, and he saw Jim do the same. Gabe got about halfway up, shaking violently, then fell down again and stayed there. Steve moved a little faster. They needed to do this quick.

Gray's lower body was trapped under the heavy shelf, and he cried out in pain as Steve stepped up and stomped across the top of it towards him, then reached down and grabbed his collar and yanked his head up. "Where's the antidote?" he demanded.

A small smile flickered across the pain on Gray's face. "Erskine really did a fantastic job with you, didn't he? I must admit I am impressed."

"Antidote," Steve growled, his face inches from Gray's.

Gray's smile got wider and more dangerous. "Oh, no, I don't think so." He made a quick motion with his tongue, and though Steve recognized it, he wasn't fast enough to stop him from crunching down on the suicide pill hidden in his teeth. "Impressive you may be, Captain, but you're still going to die. Hail Hydra." He foamed at the mouth and convulsed once, twice, then lay still.

"NO!" Steve shouted.

"Cap, I don't…" came Jim's voice. Steve looked up to see Jim leaning heavily on one of the tables, swaying where he stood.

"No, no, no," Steve said, dropping Gray's collar and hurrying over. "Jim, I need you stay with me. We need to find this antidote, okay?"

Jim nodded. "I know," he said quietly. "But we need to do it quick." He nodded at the far door and gestured with his wand. "Did the spell. Checked for people. No one else here."

"Good," Steve said. "That's good. Okay. Let's find this thing. What am I looking for?"

Jim shook his head. "Dunno what it looks like."

"Here!" Steve said, flinging open a cabinet door to reveal neatly lined-up vials of potions. He steered Jim over to the cabinet. "Is it any of these?"

Jim shook his head again. "Can't—" He broke off and coughed. "Can't see straight to read 'em. Read…" He gestured weakly at the cabinet. "Read th' labels to me."

Steve turned to the cabinet and peered at the vials. "There's no names," he whispered. He whirled back to face Jim. "There's no names, Jim, only numbers."

Jim groaned. "S'not good. Code. Keep other people fr'm messin' with his stuff."

"Jim, what do I do?"

"Maybe…maybe a notebook? Gotta keep track of what numbers is what somewhere."

Steve looked around the lab helplessly. There were enough notebooks and stacks of paper to fill a corner of the library. "Jim, I—" Jim's eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over sideways. Steve caught him and staggered to the ground with him. "No," he whispered. No, no, no, he couldn't be this close and lose them all now!

His eyes roamed the room desperately, searching for something, for anything that might help. He spotted the table where Gray had stacked their gear and looked at it for a long moment before something clicked in the haze that was filtering into his brain. Radio. Gabe's bag had a radio.

Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to the table. He had to dig a little bit to find the radio, slumping against the table in relief when he did. He didn't allow himself to fall any further, though. If he hit the floor, he didn't think he would be able to get up again. And this wasn't over yet.

"H'lo?" he rasped into the radio. "Come in. Peggy? Howard?" Anyone?

"Hello?"

Steve couldn't place the voice, but relief coursed through his chest. "Oh, thank God," he breathed. "Who is this?"

"Ethan Green. Rogers, is that you?"

"Ethan? What…what are you doing there?" That was the last voice he'd been expecting from Howard's lab, and, quite honestly, one of the last he'd wanted to hear.

"Waiting to get some new gear from Stark."

"Well, listen, can you get him or Peggy or…"

"No one else is here," Ethan replied. "They're in a meeting that's running long. Trying to track you lot down—where are you?"

"Not really sure," Steve admitted. Actually Ethan…maybe Ethan wasn't the worst person to get on the other end of the radio after all. "Listen, Ethan, I need you tell me how to make a portkey."

There was silence for a moment. "A portkey? No, look, I can just make one here and come and fetch you."

"No!" Steve snapped. "No, it…It's not safe."

"Are you taking fire?" Ethan asked, suddenly sounding concerned.

"No, it's not that. There's no hostiles around, but we've been contaminated. The whole team. You show up here, you're gonna get it too." He broke off and coughed, pulling the radio away so he didn't get blood all over it. "Just tell me how to make a portkey."

"Have you ever made one before?" Ethan asked.

"No."

"Then now's not the time to learn."

"Ethan—"

"No, listen. It's easy once you know how, but it's really tricky to get right. You sound dreadful, and if you're ill, that's not going to help. You could end up God only knows where. Let me come and get you."

"No, Ethan, this is really dangerous stuff. I don't want anyone else to get this."

"Captain," Ethan replied, and Steve could hear a smile in his voice. "This is hardly the first dangerous mission I've been on. Rescue and extraction isn't a safe line of work, but it's what I do. Let me help you."

"Okay," Steve sighed. Ethan was right, and they were running out of time to argue about it. "Do you know how to get the radio to figure out where we are? I honestly have no clue."

"Yeah," Ethan replied. "Stark must have finessed it a bit. There's a little screen giving coordinates."

"Okay," Steve said. "Come here, and you'll need something big enough for the whole team to get us back, but listen, first, you need to go up to the infirmary and have them set up some kind of quarantine field. The return portkey needs to drop us inside of that. And tell Rains or Phillips or Kendall or whoever that this is the Hydra-enhanced strain of tuberculosis and we need the cure the S.S.R. developed. And quick. Some of us don't have a lot of time left." Bucky had to be under the three-hour mark by now.

"Got it," Ethan replied. "I need a bit of time to get all that done. Can you give me ten minutes?"

"Yeah," Steve replied. "Thank you," he added quietly.

"See you soon," Ethan said, and the line went dead.

Steve was tempted to sink down onto the floor in relief, but he couldn't yet. Ethan was coming here, and most of his team was still back in the cage. If he could get them all in here waiting for him, the faster they'd be able to get out of here.

It took far more effort than Steve knew it should have, moving the rest of the team. Though he used his wand to blast away the cage door so he wouldn't have to crawl under it, they were still a lot for his aching muscles to try to move. It wasn't until he'd already moved Jacques and Monty that it belatedly occurred to him that he could use magic to move them. He then discarded the idea—he wasn't sure how well he could get his magic to work, and he didn't want to drop anyone or slam them into a wall. Dugan, he did have to drag—though his usual strength should have allowed him to carry someone that big, he didn't trust his arms or his legs to manage it.

Bucky came last, and Steve got him up in his arms and cradled him against his chest as he had done with Peggy just a few weeks ago. His breathing was shallow and uneven, reminding him of his ma's last hours and he had to swallow down a rising swell of fear. It was going to be okay. Ethan would be here any minute now. He was going to be fine.

"St've?" Bucky rasped.

Steve looked down and met the bleary eyes blinking up at him. "Hey, Buck," he said softly.

"'s cold," Bucky said.

"I know, I'm sorry," Steve said, trying to readjust the jacket that had been around Bucky and keep it from falling to the floor.

"'m scared, Steve," Bucky whispered. He blinked watery eyes up at him. "I don' wanna die. Not like this."

Steve swallowed down a painful lump in his throat. "You're not going to, Bucky."

"Don' have much time left. I c'n feel it."

Steve lost his balance trying to lay Bucky down next to Gabe, but caught himself and landed on his knees and didn't drop him. "Bucky, you are not going to die," Steve said as firmly as he could muster. "It's all gonna be fine now." He squeezed Bucky's hand as he laid him down. "I promise."

Bucky blinked up at him, and the tears that had been pooling in Steve's eyes finally spilled out at the trust he saw there. "Okay," Bucky whispered. He smiled just a little as his eyelids fluttered shut.

Steve dashed his sleeve across his eyes and sank down a little lower, though he didn't allow himself to sit. The air in front of him twisted and uncurled, and there stood Ethan Green, tossing a clipboard out of his hand and striding toward him holding what looked like a bicycle wheel.

"Bloody hell, you weren't kidding," he said. "Are you alright?"

"Will be," Steve nodded. He squinted. Things were starting to get a little fuzzy. "Zat a bicycle wheel?"

Ethan smiled and nodded. "Yeah. It's handy for moving big groups in small spaces."

"You jus' had that around?"

Ethan's smile widened. "Yeah. Best to be prepared. Now come on, get a hand on it. We'll be off in just a minute."

Steve had arranged his team more or less in a circle with their heads in the center, and Ethan carefully laid the wheel down on top of them. "Don' have enough hands to get 'em to hold it," Steve said, and that hadn't been quite the way he'd wanted those words to come out, but Ethan got the gist.

"They don't have to. You only have to touch a portkey—you don't actually have to have a firm grip on it."

"Oh. S'good." He leaned forward, putting one hand on Bucky's chest to keep his balance and the other on the wheel. "An' we're goin' back inside the quarantine?"

"Everything's all set up," Ethan assured him. "They'll be ready for us."

Steve nodded. "Maybe should send someone here to look through all this," he said, nodding at the room and its contents. Some of it was probably pretty important, and he didn't know if he was going to be conscious enough to relay that to anyone else in a timely manner.

"I'll let Phillips know," Ethan said. "Hold on."

The air twisted and spun and something yanked on Steve's insides and then he was crashing onto a stone floor and rolling to the side. There was commotion surrounding them, and he instinctively pushed himself to his feet, wand at the ready, but it was alright. They were safe. They were back at Hogwarts in the infirmary. Some kind of glowy golden bubble thing was surrounding where they'd landed, and Nurse Rains and some other doctor-y looking people were standing inside of it. They were rushing forward now that they'd landed, and Steve wasn't sure if he could get the words to come out to let them know they were contagious, but then he saw little brass protective charms dancing around their necks, and he recognized those, and he relaxed. They were gonna be okay.

Ethan appeared out of the blurriness that was starting to fill the air and patted him on the arm. "You can stand down now, Captain. Everyone's safe."

Safe. They were safe. They'd made it back and there was medicine and they were gonna be okay. He did it. Stand down. He could stand down now. Everyone was safe. That was his last conscious thought before blackness rolled in and took him.

* * *

_Once again (as if there was ever any doubt), Steve pulls through, even if it was by the skin of his teeth this time. Time for some well-deserved rest now._

_I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and/or a Happy Hanukkah! I'll see you Friday!_


	57. Peggy Heals Some Hurts

_So, everyone's home now and in one piece (if only barely). Time for a nice, restful recovery chapter and some fluff.  
_

* * *

Steve and the rest of the Howling Commandos had been in the infirmary for nearly a day before any of them woke up. Peggy had been worried when they missed their check in, and had helped Phillips organize a search and rescue when they didn't come back at all. When nothing turned up in Zurich, they regrouped and tried to figure out how to widen their search. Everyone had been greatly surprised by Ethan Green bursting into the middle of their meeting, and after Phillips had stopped yelling at him about how this was all classified, he'd told them he'd been talking to Steve, and then things got very busy.

The team had all been treated by the time Peggy had gotten to the infirmary, and though they were going to be under quarantine for a few more days until they healed, she'd been granted a protective charm to come in and check up on them. She'd left to oversee the group gathering intel from Gray's lab (as well as the team's gear), and to find Esther and Rebecca and give them an update on their brothers. But she'd spent most of her time here, going through intelligence and watching over her boys.

If there was one good thing about this whole fiasco, it was that she definitely had the proof she needed to show Phillips the spy was real. There on top of the pile in her lap was a slim folder pulled from the lab containing background information on each member of the team, photographs, where the location of the safehouse in Zurich was and details on its security, and when the boys would be there. The team had been ambushed, clear as day, and now she had proof that someone on the inside was feeding Hydra. She was glad she'd demanded all information brought out of Gray's lab be given to her and her alone. Everything that wasn't currently in the pile in her lap was locked up, and no one but her should know what was in it. She didn't want to tip off the spy that they were closer to finding them.

She was having trouble concentrating, though. Her gaze kept drifting up and down the row of beds she was sat in the middle of. They still didn't know the full story of what had happened, only what Steve had relayed to Ethan before passing out. (Ethan's exposure to the disease had been minimal, and he had been treated before feeling any symptoms and deemed safe to leave quarantine after six hours.) She didn't know how Gray had caught them all, or what he'd done besides exposing them all to the disease, or why he'd done it at all (though she imagined it had something to do with Phillips' relocation op). She didn't know how close they'd come to not surviving it.

Steve coughed and shifted uneasily on the bed beside her chair, muttering something under his breath. Peggy set down her stack of papers and leaned over, stroking the side of his head and brushing back hair damp with sweat and he quieted, sleeping on. She'd seen Steve sick before—for the first five years she'd known him, he'd spent almost as much time in the infirmary as out. But there was something more…she didn't want to say pathetic, that wasn't right, but there was something that just made it seem worse now. Perhaps it was because he wasn't supposed to get sick anymore. Perhaps it was that he was so big and strong, it felt like whatever could reduce him to this state had to be more dangerous than it would have before. In any case, it was dreadful sitting here and seeing him like this. But she hated to leave him alone.

Some hours later, he started shifting again, and she held her breath as he slowly came awake. "Steve?" she asked.

He rolled his head to look at her, and his eyes were sick and weary and a little lost, and he stared at her for a moment before he seemed to realize that he was actually awake. "Hi, Peggy," he rasped.

"Would you like some water?" she asked, turning and filling a glass that sat on the bedside table. He nodded, and she leaned in with the glass, lifting his head with one hand and helping him drink.

"Thanks," he said when she was done, and he sounded a little bit better. His eyes roamed around the room before landing on her again. "Are we home?" he asked.

She nodded and smiled. "You are."

He nodded, and then his eyebrows furrowed in concern and his breathing quickened. "Everyone? Where's—" He struggled to sit up and his breathing was becoming more agitated and pained-sounding. "Bucky. Bucky was real bad, is he—"

"He's over there," Peggy said, not needing any effort at all to push him back down on the pillow and hold him there. She pointed to the next bed over and Steve's eyes followed her hand. To her dismay, Steve did not look reassured.

"He looks so bad," he said, his voice cracking.

"I know," she said, resting a hand on the side of his face. Bucky, for whatever reason, had been far sicker than the rest of them when they arrived. He'd gotten treatment, and after a couple of nerve-wracking hours, Nurse Rains had been able to assure her that he would make a full recovery, but he did look awful at the moment. His skin was still a worrying shade of pale bordering on grey, and his breathing had been so erratic that he'd been given an oxygen mask to help regulate it. "But he's going to be alright," she told Steve. "It's just going to take a bit longer for him to get back on his feet than it will for you, but he's going to be fine. I promise."

Steve nodded, though he still looked worried. "What about Dugan? He didn't wake up for a really long time. And Jacques was—"

"Everyone's here, Steve," she told him. "And they're all going to be okay." She reached down and squeezed his hand. "You got them back in time."

"They're all gonna be okay?" he asked, and she could see he was starting to fade again.

"They're all going to be okay," she repeated.

"Ethan too?"

"Ethan too," she said. She brushed his hair away from his face. "You did well, Steve. You don't need to worry."

He nodded, relaxing back into the mattress. "S'good. I was worried we weren't gonna…"

"I know," she said. She leaned down and kissed his forehead softly. "But everyone's going to pull through. It's all alright now."

He smiled sleepily. "You're not gonna get sick, kissin' me like that, are you? I'm real contagious."

"Yes, you are," she agreed. "Which is why you're inside the quarantine shield," she told him, nodding at the golden shimmer that stretched along the row of beds. "But I've got a protective charm." She held up the little brass charm on a string around her neck. "I'm alright."

Steve nodded. "S'what I thought that was. S'good." His eyes were drooping shut but they fluttered open with what looked like some effort. "Zat mean you can kiss me again?"

She laughed and leaned in again, kissing him warmly on the cheek this time. "Yes, it does." She straightened up, her hand resuming its earlier stroking of his hair. "Get some rest."

"Mm," he hummed, eyes already closed.

After he'd fallen back asleep, Peggy stood up and stretched all the kinks out of her back. With as often as they ended up here, they should really invest in some more comfortable chairs. She smiled to herself. Phillips probably wouldn't approve the budget for that. She walked up and down the row of beds, checking in on each of the boys. So far, Steve was the only one to have woken up, but that was hardly surprising. He should be healing faster than the others due to the protective nature of the serum. Even so, she'd been initially concerned when they'd all remained unconscious for so long. She'd never seen anyone affected by Hydra's strain of the disease before, but she'd heard bits and pieces by now from Steve about how his mum had died. Mrs. Rogers had been in and out of consciousness, and when Peggy voiced her concern to Nurse Rains, Rains had pointed out that Mrs. Rogers had been receiving treatment throughout the course of her illness. Even if it hadn't worked, it had alleviated her symptoms somewhat. Steve and the others had received no such treatment until arriving here. Though it made her even more angry with Gray, that did make Peggy worry less.

She continued on with sorting through the intel from the lab, getting up once or twice to switch it out with new stacks of paper from the locked compartment under her desk. Aside from the revelation that Gray had been waiting for the team, there wasn't much of interest there. Some scientific data that Howard would appreciate a look at, some correspondence that didn't appear to have much strategic value, a few reports that seemed to be from Hydra missions that had already happened—those would probably bear closer reading over later, but weren't exactly urgent. Nothing on where Gray had gotten his information on the team or who he communicated with. Either their spy was very careful, or Gray was—the little building with the lab where the team had been held was in Bern, and was obviously not where Gray lived. They didn't know where that was, but he probably kept most of his valuable intel there instead of traveling with it.

Steve woke up again a few hours later, and seemed a lot more coherent this time, though he was still shaky when he tried to sit up on his own. Once he was up, he looked down at his bandaged right arm in confusion. "Is my…" His twisted his wrist experimentally and winced. "Is my wrist broken? When did that happen?"

"When you got back," Peggy told him. She hadn't been there for this part, but she'd heard about it. "You passed out after you landed, and, well, you're quite large now, you know, and no one was able to catch you."

He blinked, absorbing that. "It's broken because I fell down?"

"Yeah."

He huffed a laugh, sounding a little embarrassed. "Okay."

"Nurse Rains says she can't fix it until all the potions and things are out of your system. That's why it's still broken," she explained.

"Okay," he said again. "Did we find anything good at Gray's place?"

Peggy told him in brief what they had found. She didn't want to overwhelm him just yet, and she didn't press for any details of what had happened on the mission either—there would be time enough for that when he was well. He told her a few things, though, and she did make sure to give him everything she'd discovered about the spy.

"That makes sense," he agreed when she told him about the file on who they all were and where they were going to be. "He did seem to know a lot about us." Something hard crossed his face, and Peggy wondered what Gray had said. "Does Phillips know?"

"I passed it on to him," Peggy replied. "We're trying to keep it quiet. Obviously the spy is someone with higher clearance, but that's still a fair number of people. We're keeping all the intel that came back very close—hopefully we won't tip whoever it is off."

"Does it narrow it down for you at all?" he wondered.

"Quite a bit, actually." While the details of the mission—like the location of the warehouse and the destination of the refugees—had been highly classified, the existence of the mission and less important facts had been a little better known. Still, the whole thing had been classified enough to knock a good chunk of people off of Peggy's suspect list. Like she'd told Steve, it wasn't enough to nail anyone down, but she had a much better idea of who to keep an eye on now.

"Good," he declared.

"Are you going to eat your dinner?" she asked, nodding down at the untouched tray on his lap. Nurse Rains had brought it by when it seemed certain he was going to be awake long enough to eat it.

Steve shook his head. "I'm not really hungry."

"Steve, you need to eat. You've not had any food since Wednesday, and with your metabolism the way it is—"

"I know!" Steve snapped. "But I said I'm not hungry."

Peggy chose not to take offense at his tone. "Bucky was right," she said. "You do get cranky when you're sick."

Steve looked up at her, surprised, then blushed deeply. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't've…"

"It's alright," she told him. She tapped the bowl with her wand, reheating the soup. "Just eat a bit. For me?" She blinked her eyes imploringly at him and he scowled.

"You play dirty, Peggy Carter," he said, but he picked up the spoon and took a tentative bite.

She smiled coyly. "If it works," she said with a shrug.

Steve ate two thirds of the soup before putting the spoon down. "Can I stop?" he asked. "I really don't think I can eat any more."

He _was_ looking a bit nauseous. "Alright." She took the tray and moved it aside and he settled back into the pillows. Peggy moved up to sit next to him and tugged his head over to lean on her shoulder. They sat like that for a while, not saying anything. It was easy to blow past how frightening this had all been because he was getting well so quickly. But this had been a close call—closer than either of them liked to admit. Peggy hugged him against her a little tighter.

She thought he'd fallen asleep again when she heard him sniff softly. Looking down, she saw him blinking rapidly, trying and failing to keep the tears pooling his eyes from falling. "Steve, what's wrong?" she asked, moving and turning a bit so she could face him and see him better.

He sniffed and dashed a hand across his nose, his mouth twisting up as he tried not to cry. "Peggy, I…I feel terrible."

"Oh, Steve," she said gently, putting a hand to the side of his face. "I know. But you're going to be alright."

"No," he said, sniffing again and shaking his head. "It isn't that."

"Then what is it?" she asked. It certainly seemed a natural thing to be upset about, though she'd be lying if she said the tears didn't surprise her a little.

"This is…" He swallowed hard, his breath hitching in his throat. "This is what it felt like for her," he said softly. "My ma. She felt this bad. Only she—" His breath hitched again and there was no stopping the tears now. "She wasn't going to get better. She just kept feeling worse and that was the last thing she ever—"

The words stopped as a sob escaped his throat and Peggy pulled him up off the pillows and into her arms, tucking his head under her chin and wrapping her arms around him. "Oh, Steve, I'm sorry," she whispered as he sobbed into her shoulder. She kissed the side of his head and pulled one hand up over his head protectively, holding him as close against her as she could. "I'm so, so sorry."

She didn't know what else to say, so she just held on to him. She felt like the world's biggest idiot—of course this would remind him of what happened to his mum! It was only the same bloody disease after all. She should have seen this coming. She couldn't spend too much time in self-reproach, however, because Steve was still crying, hot anguished tears that she could feel soaking through her shirt and it broke her heart. "Oh, Steve," she whispered. She wanted to whisper reassurances, tell him it was okay, but it wasn't. Outwardly, he always seemed so unshakable and strong, so confident. But he was still a boy who'd watched his mother die, and today he'd been cruelly reminded of how much she'd suffered before he lost her.

Peggy and her mum so very often didn't see eye to eye anymore, but Peggy still couldn't imagine how much it would hurt to lose her. Steve had fallen to pieces when his mum had died, and even as Peggy's heart ached for him, rage churned inside her chest—rage at Hydra for tearing his world apart back then and for making him relive it all now. She was going to end them if it was the last thing she ever did.

She didn't know how much more of this her heart could take, but she kept holding on and he kept crying, and eventually his tears ran out.

"'m sorry," he said thickly, sitting up away from her and wiping his nose.

"Don't be," she told him. Her own eyes had started watering as he'd wept, and she put her hands on the sides of his face and leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. "You've got nothing to apologize for." She sat up and looked at him, her heart breaking all over again at the pain in his blue eyes. "It's alright." Condolences danced on the edge of her tongue, longing to spill out, to say _something_ in an attempt to make it better, but he didn't need that right now. She stroked her fingers along his hairline instead, smiling gently. A tiny, grateful smile tugged up the corners of his mouth and he nodded.

One hand on his chest and one hand on the back of his head, Peggy pushed him back gently to rest against the pillows again. "Get some rest, hey?" she said softly. She longed to do more, but there wasn't anything else she could do. Sleep wouldn't take the pain away, but it would dull the edges. She leaned down and kissed his forehead again as he blinked up at her tiredly. "I'll be right here," she promised.

* * *

Steve drifted in and out a lot over the course of the next couple of days, but he found himself able to stay awake for longer periods of time, his strength slowly returning. It had scared him, feeling this sick. It was an all too familiar feeling, and something deep down inside had wondered—since he wasn't supposed to get sick anymore—if this disease was strong enough to break through the serum, to undo it all and take him back to where he'd been before.

He'd been scared too, being awake and watching his teammates continue in their unconsciousness. Both Peggy and Nurse Rains kept reassuring him that it was only that the serum was healing him faster than them, but he still felt better once they started to wake up.

Bucky was the last one to wake up. Steve knew he'd been sicker than the rest of them, but somehow it hadn't seemed as bad in the cage—there, they were all sick; here, he was feeling better, Gabe wasn't coughing anymore, he could see the color returning to Jacques' face, but Bucky remained pale and shaky, still needing the oxygen mask to breathe and persisting in his unconsciousness. Nurse Rains had refused to let Steve get out of bed and move over to sit with him, but Peggy had helped him prop himself up with his pillows so at least he could see him. When Bucky finally did wake up, he coughed and rasped and didn't look like he knew what was going on, but he was alive and he was awake and Steve found it a little easier to breathe.

After the weekend, Peggy had to go back to classes (as did Becky, who'd been practically glued to her brother's bedside), so Steve spent his time—when he was awake—going over the intel Peggy had put together from Gray's lab. Bucky mostly slept. When he was awake, he was very interested in what they'd learned about the spy, and though he was coherent enough now to absorb the information and try to puzzle it out, he wasn't able to stay awake long enough to get very far. Steve supposed it shouldn't be, but it was kind of funny when Bucky kept falling asleep mid-sentence.

One evening, Peggy was back visiting after dinner. Bucky had fallen asleep part-way through the meal, but Becky was sitting beside him, determined to make him finish when he woke up. Steve's appetite was returning, so he'd finished his food and he and Peggy were just sitting and talking. Not about work, which was kind of nice.

"You do know no one's expecting you to do homework right now?" Peggy pointed out.

"Yeah, but I'm bored, and it's less to catch up on when I get out of here," Steve protested. "Besides," he added. "You can't tell me Kendall doesn't think I've got plenty of time to work while I'm just laying around."

Peggy sighed. "He's not very sympathetic, is he? Although, he'll give you grief about it, but he's not actually going to dock your grade for not doing homework while you're sick. I think," she added.

Steve chuckled. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, signaling the beginning of Study Hall. Becky sighed and rose, then came around to Steve's bed to give him a hug.

"Goodnight, Steve," she said. "Hope you feel better tomorrow." She cast an eye back over to her brother's bed. "When he wakes up, will you make him finish his dinner?"

"If I'm awake then, then yes, I will."

"Okay, thanks. See you tomorrow. G'night, Peggy."

"Goodnight, Rebecca," Peggy said. Becky waved and went to collect Esther from Jim's bedside before heading back to Ravenclaw Tower.

They talked a little longer before Steve started yawning profusely, and Peggy smiled at him. "I'll go and let you get some rest, shall I?"

"Wait," Steve said, catching her hand as she started to stand up. He'd had a lot of time to think, stuck here in bed without being able to go anywhere, and he'd figured out a few things he thought he should say before he chickened out or before things got busy again.

She sat back down. "Is everything okay?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I just, well, I thought I should tell you…" He drew in a deep breath. Why was this so hard? He never had trouble telling Peggy anything. He looked back up at her. "Peggy, I…I've been thinking about this for a while. And I know it might sound like I'm saying this because I almost died, but that's not really it. I mean, it is a little, but I almost die kind of a lot, and I guess this time it just got me thinking…" He was rambling now. This was going just great.

"You do almost die a lot," Peggy agreed. "It wouldn't hurt you to be more careful." She was smiling while she said it, but Steve could tell she meant it.

"Yeah," he agreed. "It's not like I _try_ to do it or anything."

"I know," she replied. "But what is it you're trying to tell me?"

Oh, right. "Well, um, I…" Another deep breath. "Peggy, I love you. So much. I have for a long time, and I don't know why I haven't said it before. Usually when things go wrong on missions it's so fast there's not time to think about it and then it's over and back to normal, but I had a lot of time to think this time, and I realized I could've died and you'd never know, so I wanted to actually, to really say it. I love you."

Peggy was staring at him with her eyes wide, a look on her face that he couldn't quite figure out what it meant. What felt like a day and a half of silence passed between them, though it was probably only just a few seconds, and Steve's stomach twisted itself into nervous knots. Oh, crap, he took it too far. He should've just not said anything. It was weird now, he'd made it weird, and she was just going to get up and leave, and he should've just stopped talking. Why the hell had he said any of that? But then Peggy smiled at him. Her eyes lit up and she smiled at him in that way that made his stomach twist into an entirely different, wonderful kind of knot.

"Oh, Steve," she breathed, and was she about to cry? "Steve, I love you too."

Steve was probably grinning like an idiot, but he couldn't stop and he didn't really care. "Really?"

"So much," she said, and her eyes _were_ watering, just a little bit, but she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

The next couple of minutes were kind of a blur, but she was still smiling when they broke apart and Steve was pretty sure he was too. She kissed him one more time then stood up, trailing her fingers up the side of his face as she stood. "I'll let you get your rest now," she said. "I love you."

He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingers before she pulled it away. "I love you too," he said. Wow, that felt so good to say! And it felt…right. He should have done it a long time ago. "Good night."

She smiled and waved and he watched her walk away, the dizzy buzzing in his head broken by a raspy chuckle from the bed to his left. "Atta boy, Stevie," Bucky said proudly.

Steve spun to the left, feeling his face get so hot he was pretty sure his hair was blushing. Bucky was looking over at him, grinning from ear to ear. "You, uh, you heard that, huh?" was the best Steve could manage.

"Yep."

"You could've said something."

"I woke up right before you got the words out. You really wanted me to interrupt?"

Well, when you looked at it that way, no, not really.

"Look," Bucky continued. "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to eavesdrop."

Steve waved the apology away. "Well, you're like, four feet away. Ward's not exactly built for privacy." Joy came bubbling back up and he grinned. "Buck, she said it back! She loves me too!"

"Well, sure," Bucky said with a smile. "I coulda told you that." His smile softened. "I'm happy for you, man."

"Thanks." He leaned back against his pillows with a happy sigh, contentment rolling through him along with his exhaustion. Oh, wait, yeah. "Oh, yeah, I was supposed to tell you if you and me were awake at the same time that Becky wants you to finish your dinner."

Bucky looked over at the tray on the nightstand and the half-finished sandwich. "Yeah, I guess I should." He reached an arm out and snagged the sandwich off the tray. "How long you been waiting to tell her that?" he asked, nodding at the door Peggy had left through.

Steve yawned and shrugged thoughtfully. "Dunno. A while. Always figured there'd be time, you know? Then she almost died after that thing with Coleman and I almost did it then, but then things were normal again so fast. And then it got real bad for us this time, and I realized something could happen on some mission and she'd never know."

Bucky nodded. "Were you also holding off 'cause you were afraid she wasn't going to say it back?"

Steve inclined his head. "A little. Is that normal? I mean, I feel like we're in the same place, so I would hope she would."

"It's normal. Fear of rejection's not always rational," Bucky said sagely. He grinned. "But she did say it back."

"Yeah," Steve sighed happily. "It feels awesome."

Bucky chuckled. "No kidding. You look about ready to float away."

"Shut up," Steve said, blushing but not really minding. He _did_ feel like he could float away somewhere.

"What, so I'm finally awake and now _you're_ falling asleep?" Bucky asked, and Steve realized his eyes were closed. "Who'm I supposed to talk to?"

"S'alright," he told Bucky, not opening his eyes. "You been awake, like, ten minutes. You'll be out again soon."

Bucky snorted, but there was a fond smile in his voice when he said, "G'night, Stevie."

* * *

At the end of a week, most of the team was released from the infirmary. Steve, though he was recovered a day or two ahead of the rest of them, had been forced to stay just to make sure the lingering contagion was gone. He'd been very antsy the last couple of days, practically bouncing down the stairs when he'd been released with the rest of them. Bucky was still there, and it would be a few more days until he got out, though he was looking much better. Dugan was still in too, and you would have thought he was dying, the way he moaned about it.

Peggy had been working in the library with Steve, helping him catch up on what he'd missed. It still sent a little thrill down her spine, hearing him say the words, 'I love you', and it still sent warmth swelling through her chest when she said them back. It just felt right, like they should have always been saying it, and she did wonder why she never had before. She supposed she had always been a bit slow when it came to expressing her feelings about Steve.

She and Steve finished up what they were working on, and he kissed her and told her he loved her and left for the infirmary to help Bucky with the same project. Bucky still had plenty of time to do it, but he was at the stage in his illness now where he felt significantly better and was inclined to feel bored and cranky about being forced to stay in bed. Homework was a fair distraction.

Peggy would have gone with him, but she had some more stuff she needed to work on here. It was hard to get much of anything done with Rose and Martha whispering and giggling across the table, however. "What are you two on about?" she asked.

Rose smiled. "She was just telling me about her walk last night with David in the rose garden."

"It _is_ lovely in in the moonlight," Martha agreed. She smirked. "Maybe when Bucky's on his feet again, you two could take a walk down there."

"Oh, no, didn't I tell you?" Rose said. "We split it off before he went off to Switzerland."

"What? Really?" Peggy hadn't heard that.

"Oh, there was nothing wrong," Rose said. "It just turns out that aside from liking Quidditch, we've not got anything in common. And you can't talk about Quidditch forever, so…" She shrugged.

Martha grinned. "Who says you need to talk?"

Rose laughed. "That's true. We did have fun."

"Okay, no," Peggy said, sensing where this was going. "You can stop now. That's one of my best friends you're talking about, I really don't want any more details than that."

"Sorry," Rose said, still smiling. They studied quietly for a minute before she leaned across the table to Martha. "He _is_ a good kisser, though, isn't he?"

Martha, who had gone out with Bucky at some point during Fifth Year, nodded vehemently. "Oh, yeah," she agreed. She sighed dreamily. "That thing he does where he sort of…bites your lip a bit…"

"Oh, yeah," Rose agreed.

"Okay," Peggy said, standing up and grabbing her book. "I'll see you later."

Rose and Martha cackled behind her as she walked away and were promptly shushed by the librarian.

Deciding to stop off in the bathroom, Peggy thought she heard a soft, sniffling sound coming from one of the stalls as she shut the main door. It sounded like someone crying. "Hello?" she asked. "Is someone there?" The sound was coming from the stall on the end, and Peggy saw a small pair of shoes underneath the door. "Are you alright?" she asked, easing the door open.

Rebecca Barnes looked up, hastily wiping her nose on her sleeve as Peggy came in. "Oh, h—hi Peggy," she said. "I'm, it's fine, I'm okay."

"No, you're not," Peggy said. Her blue eyes were red and puffy—she'd clearly been having quite a cry. "What's wrong?"

Rebecca sighed. "Me and Matthew had a fight," she said quietly. Peggy thought back quickly—Matthew was the boy she'd started going out with last term, much to her brother's surprise.

"I'm sorry," Peggy said. She put an arm over her shoulders and led her out from inside the stall. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Rebecca shrugged in an attempt at nonchalance, but the story came spilling out so quickly, the answer was obviously, 'yes'. "Well, we were, we were supposed to go down to the lake this afternoon. Only, I was late 'cause I was doing homework and I lost track of what time it was. But then, he, well, he didn't get mad I was late, but he got upset that I was doing the homework with Mickey Fowler. I said why does it matter if I was doing homework with Mickey, and he said 'cause Mickey's a boy, and I shouldn't be spending so much time with other boys 'cause I'm going out with him. And I told him I don't like Mickey like that, and Mickey's my friend and he needed help figuring out how to do a Shield spell, and I'm pretty good at Shield spells, so why shouldn't I help him? And he said that that wasn't the point, that I'm always doing stuff like that and that it looks bad when people see me around with all these boys who aren't him, 'cause it looks like I'm some sort of floozy or something."

Peggy's eyebrows leapt up into her hair. "He said _what_?"

"Yeah, I slapped him when he called me that—"

"Good for you," Peggy interrupted, and Becky smiled a little and continued.

"But then he started yelling, so I started yelling back, and we had a big fight and now we're not, we're not going out anymore," she finished. She sniffed again. "And I just, he made me so mad, but he, I mean…Was he right?" she asked softly, tears pooling in her eyes again.

"No," Peggy said firmly.

"Really?"

"Really. A good guy is not going to try to tell you who you can and can't be friends with. Look at me and Steve. He doesn't mind when I spend time with Jim, or Gabe, or your brother. Because he knows we're friends. Or your brother and Vicki Marlowe when they're together. She's the year above him and in a different House—I don't think he even knows most of the boys she's friends with. But she spends time with them and he doesn't get angry. Just like she doesn't get angry when he spends time with me." She leaned down to look Rebecca in the eye and put a hand on her shoulder. "It goes both ways. You have to trust each other in a relationship, and someone trying to control who you spend time with, they don't trust you. You did the right thing, telling him off."

Rebecca was blinking up at her, absorbing her words, and now her cheeks were starting to go a little red. "Yeah. I just, well, I guess I thought he was alright. He was real nice otherwise."

Peggy squeezed her shoulder warmly. "I know. It doesn't make you stupid, that you missed it," she said, sensing where the red in Rebecca's cheeks was really coming from. "Sometimes, you can tell straight away when there's a problem, and sometimes you have to get to know a person a bit first before you can tell. That's going to be true, well, I suppose it's not particularly encouraging right now, but that's going to be true for most of your life. You do get a bit better at figuring it out quicker as you get older, though. If that helps."

One side of Rebecca's mouth quirked up in a smile. "I just," she sighed. "I just feel dumb. I made a whole big deal to Jay about how I was ready to start going out with boys and how I could tell which ones were good and all. But I was wrong."

"You weren't wrong," Peggy said. "You did the best you could with what you knew at the time, and things were alright for a while. It takes time for problems to show, and it doesn't make you wrong not spotting something that wasn't there in the beginning. It doesn't mean you're wrong about other people or that you're terrible at figuring boys out. In fact, it gives you more to work with next time."

Rebecca nodded, but her eyes were watery again. "It still hurts, though," she said quietly.

Peggy nodded. "I know." She put her other hand on Rebecca's other shoulder and pulled her over for a hug. "And that's alright too. Just because Matthew was wrong about this, it doesn't mean he's evil incarnate. There must have been something good you liked about him, or you wouldn't have gone out with him to start with." She stroked a hand across Rebecca's dark hair. "It's alright to mourn losing that."

She heard a little sniffle against her shoulder, and Rebecca nodded a little and started crying softly. Peggy just stood there and held her, stroking her hair. It was a little awkward, she supposed, since she didn't feel like she really knew Rebecca all that well, but at the same time it was rather touching that the girl trusted her enough to do this.

After a few minutes, Rebecca straightened up and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Thanks, Peggy," she said, smiling shyly. "I'm sorry, I…"

"It's alright," Peggy assured her. "There's nothing wrong with having a good cry. And there's nothing wrong with doing it more than once, either," she added. Heartache didn't heal overnight. She patted her shoulder, then steered her over to the mirror by the sink. "Let's wash your face up, hey? You'll feel better."

Rebecca washed her face and used a hairbrush Peggy lent her to straighten up her hair and readjust her headband, and she looked much more like her usual self when she was done. "Thanks," she said. A faint red returned to her cheeks. "Could you, um, could you not tell Jay?"

"If you don't want me to," Peggy said. "Are you going to tell him?" He would probably find out eventually that his sister and Matthew were no longer a couple. Especially if there had been other people around to watch their yelling match.

"Yeah," Rebecca nodded. "I just, I don't wanna bother him while he's still sick, 'cause he'll get all mad and stuff. And I, I don't know…"

"He's not going to tease you about it," Peggy told her, guessing where the rest of that sentence was going. Rebecca looked skeptical. "He's not," Peggy insisted. "Well, he might a bit, but not until he's sure that you're alright," she amended. "Rebecca, he adores you. If you're hurt, then he's going to hurt with you, and he'll be very cross with Matthew, but he's not going to make fun of you."

Rebecca smiled. "Yeah," she said softly. They exited the bathroom together, Rebecca waving shyly at her as she left, and Peggy smiled. She was going to be alright.

True to her word, Peggy said not a word to Bucky about Matthew and his sister. A few days later, when he'd finally been released from the infirmary, they celebrated by going outside and enjoying the nice spring weather down by the lake. They hadn't been down there long when Rebecca approached. "Hey, Jay?" she said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure, Munchkin," he said. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I mean, not…a little, maybe, I just…"

Peggy tugged Steve away to other side of the rock they were sitting on to give them some privacy. She knew where this was going. She couldn't keep a smile from her face a few minutes later when an indignant Bucky demanded, "He called you _what_?!"

"What?" Steve asked, looking down at her.

"I'll tell you later," she said, still smiling. That, or Bucky would. And apparently, he did. That evening at dinner, they were sitting at the Ravenclaw table with Jim and Esther and Gabe, and a very red-faced Matthew Wallace approached the table.

"Um, Rebecca, can I talk to you a minute?" he asked, keeping well away from Bucky, his eyes darting nervously between him and Steve.

"No," Rebecca said shortly. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Oh, um," Matthew said. He looked very wrong-footed for a moment, then Steve cleared his throat and Matthew continued. "I just wanted to say sorry, is all. I shouldn't've called you…well, I shouldn't've said that. I'm sorry." Before Rebecca could respond, he bolted away back to the Slytherin table.

"Jay, what did you do?" Rebecca asked, looking up at her brother curiously.

"Don't look at me like that, Gabe, the kid is twelve, I didn't hit him. Much as I wanted to," Bucky said. He looked back down at his sister. "I had a nice, long talk with him. No hands. Just words. I did threaten him pretty good, because nobody talks to my little sister like that. And I told him he'd better stay away from you, which that right there was not technically doing, but I guess it's nice he apologized."

"I'm the one who made him apologize," Steve said. They all turned to look at him and he shrugged. "Bucky's right, Becky. Nobody talks to you like that."

The conversation turned other ways then before it got too awkward, and Peggy saw Rebecca smiling down at her lap and blushing happily. When they got up after the meal, she hugged Steve and Bucky both warmly and kissed them each on the cheek.

"That was really sweet," Peggy told Steve as he started walking her back to her dorm.

He blushed a little, but shrugged again. "Just seemed like something I should do, you know? I mean, she's not really my sister, but…"

"But she sort of is," Peggy finished for him.

"Yeah."

"I think it's very sweet," she told him, stretching up on her toes to kiss his cheek. Rebecca was in good hands. She had two big brothers who cared about her very much looking out for her.

* * *

_So there's a nice, soft chapter to end the week on. Hope you all enjoy the weekend!_


	58. The Spy Strikes Again

_Everyone is whole and healthy again, and it's time to get back to work. The spy's still out there, though. And probably feeling pretty annoyed that their last attempt to get the Howlies didn't work but came so close...  
_

* * *

Though Bucky had been released from the infirmary, it took him another week or so to really feel like himself again. He felt tired a lot—not falling asleep in the middle of a conversation, as Steve had told him he'd done while in the infirmary, but not really up for going out on any missions either. The rest of the team, Steve excepted, was in the same boat, and Peggy and Phillips seemed in no hurry to send them out again until they were one hundred percent.

Bucky appreciated the break. It gave him time to catch up on the schoolwork he'd missed while he was sick, and he got to spend more time with Becky, who was still feeling a little down about her break up with Matthew. Bucky remembered the first time he'd broken up with Vicki and how morose he'd felt about that—though he did hope that Matthew and Becky weren't going to be an on-again off-again couple like he and Vicki seemed to be. (Speaking of Vicki, he missed her. He knew she was busy, but he wondered if she might want to start things up again.) He remembered Mrs. Rogers cheering him up, and though he didn't have the option at the moment to buy his sister any pie, he did get some of the really good cookies from Winston, and he spent a lot of time being silly and trying to make her laugh. She had a great laugh.

He'd also been thinking about the fact that he was very nearly a legal adult wizard. His birthday was coming up before the end of the term, and he'd be seventeen. Seventeen had always seemed so old when he'd been a kid, but he wasn't sure if he felt grown-up enough to actually _be_ an adult now that it was coming up for him. It also made the end of school and the future loom closer. He still had no idea what he wanted to do after school, except he was more sure now that once the war was over, he'd be done with all that. He was getting tired of fighting. Still, that left him an almost infinite array of career choices that seemed at times paralyzing in its vastness. Whenever that happened, he just reminded himself that he may be turning seventeen, but he wasn't leaving school yet. He had another year to work things out.

Seventeen also meant he got the big coming of age party, and he was looking forward to that, even if it was going to have to wait until he got home and had already been seventeen for a few weeks. And, he'd get to do magic without parental supervision. So, turning seventeen did have its perks. (And, he'd have almost four months of being legal on Steve. If the little punk was going to keep getting taller than him, he could at least have that.)

It was the last week of school when their last mission for the term came up. Even though they'd been on the bench for a while, they'd kept up with their regular Wednesday afternoon briefings with Peggy, just to stay in the loop of important information. There'd been a lot of piecing together of things after what happened in Zurich—thankfully, that refugee-moving op had gone off without any trouble, and those people were safe in Istanbul now (which they still weren't technically supposed to know). The spy appeared to have gone to ground for the moment, but Peggy and Phillips were still being careful with everything, and Bucky couldn't help but look at the S.S.R. staffers suspiciously.

"So, where are we headed?" Dugan asked, dropping down into his seat eagerly. It was nice to see his enthusiasm back—Bucky thought Dugan might just be worse at being sick than _he_ was. There had been a lot of whining and complaining and Jacques teasing him about being a baby for the past few weeks.

"Not France, right?" Steve said.

"Not France," Peggy confirmed. "Austria. Salzburg."

"What's in Salzburg?" Gabe asked, stretching his neck up to peek at the folder in her hands.

"Lots of Nazis, lots of Grindelwald, and lots of Hydra," Peggy replied. "And, lots of resistance. The resistance hasn't seemed to be able to get itself very organized until recently, and, unfortunately, that's where our problem comes in. Once the resistance got going, they proved to be quite a nuisance, and so either Grindelwald or Hydra, we're not sure which, decided to retaliate by kidnapping their children."

"What?" Bucky demanded. The rest of the faces around the table were staring at her just as grimly as he was.

Peggy nodded gravely. "They're taking their children. Holding them hostage in an attempt to coerce them to stop fighting."

"Are they hurting the kids?" Steve asked, in that deceptively calm voice that meant someone was about to get their teeth knocked out.

"We don't think so," Peggy said. "The threats the parents received said the children would remain unharmed if they cooperate, but…" She scowled. "We all know Hydra's so very trustworthy and honest."

"So we need to get in there ASAP," Jim said.

"Yes," Peggy replied. "Here." She started pulling things out of the folder. "I've got maps, communication records, rosters of the known resistance fighters and the known Hydra cells in the area. Let's get to it."

They spent the next several hours going over information, throwing out ideas and plans. They wanted to get there fast and save these kids, but they were taking it slow and making sure they were doing it right—they didn't want any kids getting hurt in the crossfire.

Once everything was set, they left after dinner. Apparating in wasn't an option without getting caught, but there was a little S.S.R. safehouse with a fireplace they could use that got them into the heart of the city. They had to sneak through the city and hike a little way after that—the location where the kids were supposed to be being held was a farm just outside the city.

Thankfully, there wasn't a curfew on, but it was a populated area and it took them a while to get through it all. It was nearly midnight when they had the farm in sight. It was dark—no lights along the road or anywhere outside the stone farmhouse they could just make out in the moonlight. There didn't appear to be any guards on the perimeter.

"That's weird," Dugan said.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "Do you think they're still here?"

"Well, they warded the hell out of the house up there," Jim said. "Too far out for specifics, but I can feel it from here. So, they're hiding something."

"Is it warded well enough to warrant there not being any guards?" Monty asked.

"I mean, yeah, I guess," Jim said, though he didn't sound confident. "Still, you'd think at least _one_ guy or something."

"Steve?" Bucky asked. Steve was pondering the road up to the house and the seemingly empty yard surrounding it.

"I don't like it," Steve said. "Could be that they know we're coming and they're waiting for us to get further in before they jump us. Jim, can you tell how many people are in the house?"

"No can do, Cap," Jim replied, shaking his head. "Not with all that shielding. I could do it from inside the house, but from outside, the spell will just bounce right off."

Steve nodded grimly. "Okay. Wands ready, guns out, keep quiet and keep your eyes open."

They moved forward slowly in the darkness, every nerve on high alert. Bucky felt like little shivers of electricity were dancing up and down his spine, and every flicker of shadow as the trees moved in the breeze caught his eye.

They made it to the front door of the house uncontested. Bucky and Monty hung back, scanning the yard and the sides of the house for activity. Dugan and Jim worked the entrance, investigating the spells on the door and windows.

"Okay," Dugan whispered. "We can get in here now without setting anything off. Best I can tell, there's no ambush spells waiting on the inside of the door for us. But I'd say shields up."

"Hold your breath too," Jim cautioned. "In case there's a mist or a spray or something."

"Okay. Dugan, you, me and Monty will go in first and clear the entry. Bucky, you and the other guys hang back a minute. That way if something goes wrong, the whole team's not incapacitated," Steve said.

Bucky frowned but nodded. Of course Steve was going to go in first and take the first hit. It made sense to split—especially after what happened last time—but that didn't mean Bucky had to like it.

Steve, Dugan and Monty moved into position and swept into the room on Steve's count. Bucky didn't hear any explosions or shouts of surprise or bodies hitting the ground, so after a sixty second count, he had the rest of them move in.

They were standing in a large, empty foyer. Hallways led off to other parts of the house on each side and in the middle, and two staircases stretched up to the upper level. The stone walls were dusty and coated in cobwebs. "It doesn't look like anyone's been here in a while," Gabe said.

Steve, Dugan and Monty were checking the exits to the rest of the house. Jim was shooting little spells off in every direction, scanning for inhabitants. The electricity in Bucky's spine moved around to his stomach and started churning. "Guys, this is wrong," he said.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "Way too quiet."

"Do you think they moved to a new place?" Dugan asked.

Steve shook his head. "I don't think anyone was ever here."

"And there's no one here now," Jim said. "Just us."

"I don't get it," Gabe said, looking around nervously. "Why put all this warding up and not have anything here?"

"To make us think there was something here," Bucky said.

"We need to get the hell out of here and rethink this," Steve said. "This is all kinds of wrong. Move out."

They hadn't taken more than a step in the direction of the door when the air around them came alive with magic and the sharp snapping sound of people apparating filled the room, so many it was almost deafening. The team circled up in the center of the room, shields up and weapons ready, and found themselves face to face with at least forty soldiers in Hydra black.

Everything exploded into chaos. Spells were flying so fast the dark room almost seemed like it was glowing, and bullets and crackles of lightning and tongues of fire were flying through the air. The team stood their ground in their huddle, and Bucky saw soldiers going down as they advanced towards them, but it hardly seemed like it mattered, there were so many swarming in to take their place.

Eventually their circle broke apart under the onslaught, and they split into pairs or threes, dueling with the nearest enemy fighters. Bucky found himself back to back with Steve, and they spun in slow circles, Bucky with a gun in one hand and his wand in the other, and Steve holding his wand and shield. Bucky could hear the clanging noise of the shield flying out and around the room before coming home to Steve's hand. Across the room, he could see Jacques and Gabe ducking and fighting and darting in and out, and Monty and Jim and Dugan were in a mad brawl by the stairs.

There wasn't a lot of time for thinking, just reacting and fighting, but Bucky slowly began to notice that there were way more guys coming after him and Steve than the other five. Before he had time to figure out what that meant, Steve was yelling, "DOWN!" and jumping on top of him and ducking behind his shield, and a wave of something hot and painful slammed into Steve's shield and flared out around it, sending the two of them shooting across the floor.

"Am Leben!" shouted an angry voice above the fray. "Am Leben, du idioten!"

Every single bit of air seemed to have been forced out of Bucky's lungs, but getting all two hundred pounds of Steve Rogers dropped on top of you would do that to a guy. Fortunately, he'd managed to hold on to his wand, and he clenched it tight in his fist as he gasped for air. Steve was already on his feet, covering Bucky and fighting back, and something was spinning through Bucky's mind as he tried to remember how to breathe. He didn't know much German—languages were Gabe's thing—but he'd picked up a little over the years and he thought he knew that one. Am Leben, am Leben, what…alive. That meant alive. What did they want them alive for? It probably wasn't good, whatever it was.

"Steve, wait," he croaked, as the fighting pushed Steve farther from him, but then a bolt of whatever it was that sent them into the wall came flying at Bucky and he just had the presence of mind to throw up a shield and roll away. Okay, so they didn't want _him_ alive. Just Steve. Still probably wasn't good.

More soldiers came at him then, and he was on his own this time and there wasn't time to think about anything except staying alive. He ducked and darted and fired and slashed, and either minutes or an eternity later, he couldn't tell, the room was starting to clear. The noise hadn't died down, though, and Bucky looked up to see fifteen Hydra soldiers swarming over Steve.

Steve went down in the wave of bodies, then surged back up, shedding opponents like drops of water as he swung his arms and punched with his fists and his shield. Another soldier popped up out of nowhere and almost took Bucky's head off on his way to Steve, and he had to stop and fight, and he could hear a furious cry of pain from Steve and the ominous sound of his shield dropping to the stone floor.

"Steve!" Bucky yelled, firing a burst of magic that sent his opponent flying back into the wall. He looked up to see Steve bloody and only partially conscious, a Hydra soldier's hand fisted in his collar the only thing keeping him from hitting the floor.

"Alle raus, alle raus!" yelled the guy holding on to him, and before Bucky could raise his wand, the air crackled with magic and every standing Hydra soldier vanished, taking Steve with them.

"STEVE!" Bucky yelled as they disappeared. The room was suddenly deathly quiet.

"What just…" Gabe panted.

A raspy chuckle from the floor had all of them snapping their heads around to find its source. One of the soldiers, bloody but not dead yet, was lying against the front door laughing to himself. "Looks like it worked," he croaked in heavily accented English.

Bucky surged forward and grabbed his collar, yanking him upright. "What worked?! Where did they take him?!" The man laughed again and Bucky caught the glint in his eye and the way he started to move his mouth, and he latched onto his jaw with an iron grip. "Oh, no, you don't," he snarled, squeezing the man's jaw so hard his fingernails were drawing blood, but it kept him from biting down on the cyanide capsule. "Jim!" he called.

Jim was already there, bloody all down one side of his face but muttering spells at the man's mouth, then reaching in and pulling out the fake tooth with a triumphant crow. "Ha! Got it!"

"Okay," Bucky said, letting go of his face. "Let's try again."

The man glared at him, but gestured at the bloody wound in his abdomen. "I'm dying anyway. You can't threaten me."

Bucky kicked him roughly in the side and the man cried out, curling in on himself. "I can make it hurt more before you go."

"Or," Jim said, leaning in. "I could fix that," he said, pointing at the man's wound. "Then we could take him back and let Phillips work him over. I mean, feel free to keep kicking him. In fact…" Jim stepped forward and landed a kick of his own. "We can do both."

"Let's do both," Bucky said, pleased to see the man blanch a little. He didn't know if Phillips tortured people or not, but he did know he was someone you never wanted to cross. He seemed to have a reputation in that regard. He turned back to the man as Jim knelt beside him and started muttering spells over his wound, occasionally stopping to jab him roughly in the side.

"You knew we were coming," Bucky said. "How?"

The man chuckled. "Set the whole thing up. Never had any stupid kids to start with."

Bucky had guessed as much. "To get Steve?"

"The good Captain's turning out to be a lot of trouble," he said. "We wanted him out of the way." He grinned triumphantly. "And now he is. You can do whatever you want to me, but he's gone."

"Where did he go?" Bucky demanded.

"Nowhere you're going to find him."

"Where. Did he go?"

The man just smiled, and Bucky snarled and punched him, knocking his head back into the wall and dropping him into unconsciousness. He looked over at Jim, who had finished with the wound and conjured up a couple of ropes to hold the guy. "Is there _any_ way to track an apparation spell?"

Jim shook his head solemnly. "Not without a trace set up beforehand. They could've taken him to Australia for all we know."

Bucky felt rage and the urge to throw up rising in his throat, then Jim reached over and rested a hand on his arm. "Hey. We'll find him, Sarge."

"Yeah," Gabe agreed. "They wanted him alive. So, he's alive wherever he is, and we'll find him and bring him home."

Bucky nodded. "Yeah." He swallowed hard, looked around at the team. Everyone was alive, but hurt. As much as he wanted to stay here and try to track Steve down, Jim was right, there was no way to know from here. And the team was hurt and Steve was gone, which meant now more than ever it was Bucky's job to keep them safe. "Alright," he said softly. "Jim, fix up what you can, and then we need to get going. Dugan, see if this place has a fireplace somewhere and we'll try to set up an emergency line." It would be a long walk back to the safehouse with their prisoner in tow. And those might be hours Steve didn't have.

Dugan found a fireplace in the kitchen, and he and Gabe spent several minutes on the radio with Howard hooking up a temporary connection to Phillips' office. Jim set to his healing, surprising Bucky when he came over and asked to take a look at his arm. Apparently he'd gotten shot and had failed to notice.

After Jim fixed him up, he walked over and picked up Steve's shield from where it had fallen. On the ground next to it was a wand, and Bucky recognized it as Steve's maple and eagle feather. A lump rose up in his throat and it took several swallows to get it back down. "Hang in there, Stevie," he whispered into the darkness. "I'm coming."

* * *

_Okay, I know, I know, we just had a big mission where everything went wrong. Sorry. Been a little while since we had a big cliff hanger, though. Come back next year to see how it all plays out! (Which sounds like a really long time, but it's just Friday.)_


	59. Going Undercover

_Okay, we're back! Bucky's slowly been going nuts waiting for a lead on where Steve is, but they've got one now, and if Hydra knows what's good for them, they'll get out of his way. He's going undercover, and Peggy's coming with him-Hydra would do well to steer clear of her too. Just because she's wearing heels for this one doesn't mean she won't take them down.  
_

* * *

It was days before anything good turned up. Days. Bucky was going crazy, and there was nothing he could do. No plans he could make, no puzzles to figure out, no bad guys to punch. Nothing that made him feel like he was doing anything but sitting around waiting. Peggy and Phillips were tearing through every bit of intel they had, their spies were pulling all the strings they were attached to, and while the Howlies helped in every way they could, Bucky just felt like they were spinning their wheels. Was this what Steve had felt like a year and a half ago when they'd all gone missing?

It got even worse when the end of term arrived and everyone was being sent home for Easter Break. Steve should be here, and they should be going home, but Bucky and the rest of the team weren't going anywhere.

"You be careful now, okay, Munchkin?" Bucky said. He had walked Becky down to the train station and was waiting with her on the platform. She'd never been on the train by herself before.

"I'll be okay, Jay," Becky assured him. "_You're_ the one who needs to be careful."

"I will be," he promised her. He cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead. "I'll come back. I promise. And I'll have Steve with me. We'll be home soon."

"You'd better," she said thickly, wrapping her arms around his waist.

He hugged her back tightly and kissed the top of her head. The train whistle sounded. "Better get going, okay?" he said, pulling back and ruffling her hair. "You be good for Ma and Pop, okay?"

Becky snorted. "I'm always good."

Bucky laughed. "Sure you are. I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Okay." She hugged him one more time and headed for the train, taking Esther's hand. They found a seat by the window and waved goodbye to Bucky and Jim until the train was out of sight.

Jim sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he turned to walk back up the hill. "It's weird, not being on the train, huh?"

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. It would be weirder being at home without Steve.

"D'you hear they shipped that Warner guy off to Azkaban?" Jim asked. Warner was the man they'd brought back from Salzburg. He'd remained obstinate at first, but Phillips had eventually broken him down and gotten quite a lot of information for his trouble. Unfortunately, none of that information had been where Steve was. Warner hadn't known. He'd admitted that after leaving the farmhouse, they'd been set to meet at a rendezvous point —which had been thoroughly searched by multiple S.S.R. teams—but that Steve was to be immediately transported elsewhere from there, and _that_ location had been a need-to-know basis. Warner hadn't needed to know.

"Yeah, this morning, right?" Bucky asked. He didn't really care. May as well get rid of Warner if he wasn't any use. And Azkaban seemed like a fair place to send a Hydra agent.

"Yeah. He—" Whatever else Jim had been about to say was cut off in a yelp of surprise as a silver bobcat materialized in the air right in front of them.

"Hey, guys, get up here fast," it said in Gabe's voice. "We think we've got something."

The bobcat vanished and Bucky and Jim took off running, gasping and breathing hard by the time they arrived in Peggy's office. "What'd you find?" Bucky panted.

"This," Peggy said, slapping a photograph down on the table. The picture was moving, and for a moment, Bucky thought it was just a bunch of guys in black going through a door. But as the image repeated itself, he saw a familiar blond head in the middle of it all, limp and clearly unconscious. "Steve," he breathed. He looked up. "Where is this? When was it taken?"

"It was taken the day he went missing," Peggy replied. "And it's in Salzburg."

"Salzburg?" Bucky repeated. He swallowed down a nauseous knot in his throat. "They moved him like a mile away and we didn't go after him?"

"There was no way of knowing," Peggy said gently.

"Besides, I'm the one who said he could be anywhere," Jim pointed out with a frown. He looked over at Bucky. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Sarge."

"At least we know where he is now," Gabe pointed out.

"Why are we only getting this now?" Bucky asked. "He got taken five days ago."

"Our communication in and out of Austria is very limited right now," Peggy said. "Especially after…" Her cheeks went faintly pink. Bucky knew she was blaming herself for not realizing the whole thing had been a setup, even though no one else did. They'd all fallen for it, and it had to be a hell of a forgery to get past Peggy. "Well, anyway, we have a man in Salzburg, and we weren't able to get hold of him until yesterday. He didn't know we were looking for Steve or he would have sent it earlier."

"Why did he have the picture, then?" Monty asked before Bucky could.

"He wasn't looking for Steve, but he was watching that house," Peggy replied. "It happens to belong to a very prominent Hydra agent named Hugo Zwart. He's fourth in command to Schmidt. There've been people watching that house since before the war started."

"So, we know where he is," Bucky said. "Let's prep and go."

"It's not as simple as that," Peggy said, cutting across the murmurs of agreement from the other guys. "Zwart is a brilliant scientist and inventor. And he's Number Four out of _all_ of Hydra. He is clever, he is insanely powerful, and there is a reason why, after seven years, we still only have surveillance of the _outside_ of his house."

"The right curses and explosives—" Monty started.

"Would make a mess and get Steve and all of you killed," Peggy cut him off. "This is not the time and the place for force."

"You have an idea," Bucky said.

"I have an idea," Peggy confirmed.

Zwart's security was all but impenetrable, with one exception: an invitation. And as it so happened, Zwart was not just the fourth most powerful man in Hydra, but a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party and a prominent city official in Salzburg—off the record, he was more powerful than the governor. And until Hydra achieved their dream of world domination and the oppression of all non-magical people (along with opposing magical people), that meant he had to play along with society's rules and be a good public official, mingling and networking and being a good host. And two days from now was the mayor's birthday.

"So, he's throwing a party," Dugan said, sounding unimpressed.

"The newspaper says, 'a small gathering for Salzburg's notable citizens'," Gabe read. His eyebrows went up. "Two hundred people is a small gathering? And his house is big enough for that?"

"Easily," Peggy replied, not sounding bothered. She tapped the stack of photographs their spy had been sending. Jacques let out an impressed whistle, and Bucky couldn't help but be somewhat impressed in spite of himself. He didn't think he'd ever actually seen a real mansion before. "Dancing between Hydra and Nazi politics pays very well," Peggy added, as if reading his mind.

"So, how do we get invited to this party?" Jim asked. "I'm guessing we're not on the guest list."

"No," Peggy said. "But two hundred other people are."

"Polyjuice potion again?" Gabe guessed.

Peggy grimaced. "No. We're going to have to get into this house strictly without magic. No wands, no concealment spells, nothing. His security will be checking for that sort of thing."

"So…" Jim said.

"So, here's the guest list," Peggy replied. She dropped a box filled with photographs onto the table, some, candids taken by the spy, others, newspaper clippings. "We need to find someone that at least one of you could pass for to get in."

"That's kind of iffy," Gabe pointed out, grabbing a stack of pictures.

"It's Plan A," Peggy said. "We've got plenty of other letters to go."

They spent a little while looking through pictures. In the end they found three. There was an Admiral who bore a resemblance to an older Dugan. He was discarded because he was high-ranking enough, it was likely that Zwart would have met him and an impersonation would be risky. Among the staff hired for the evening was a guy who looked enough like Monty that the switch would have been easy enough, but they vetoed that one too because the last guy looked like Bucky, and if anyone was going after Steve, it was him.

"Tell me this guy will work," he said to Peggy, as she pulled out the paper with all the information they had on Captain Daniel Klimt.

"I think…" Peggy mused as her eyes scanned the paper. "I think he will." She looked up at him. "You're going to have to dye your hair." Klimt was definitely the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan ideal, but other than that, he could have been Bucky's older brother.

"So, they look alike," Dugan said. "But they're not twins. Are we sure Zwart's not gonna look at him and go, 'You're not the guy I met before!'? Because if so, I think Monty as an unobtrusive waiter is the way to go."

"I think Monty as a waiter is a good idea anyway. But the help isn't allowed everywhere, especially when they should be working, and Klimt and Zwart haven't met," Peggy said. "Zwart's been away for a few months on what he claims to be military business but is actually Hydra work, and Klimt was stationed in the city two months ago. And he's not Hydra, just a regular Nazi, but he gets invited to the party because he's very rich and has an influential father in Vienna."

"Okay," Bucky said. "I can be Daniel Klimt. Let's start planning."

"No, no. _We_," Peggy said, indicating the rest of the group. "Will start planning. You have work to do."

"Dyeing my hair?" he guessed. He didn't see how that was going to take two days.

"Dyeing your hair, memorizing Klimt's biography, going over photos of people you should know and what you should talk about. You can't just look like him, you need to _be_ him. And you need to know how to dance. Can you dance?"

"Yeah, I can dance. Why?"

Peggy sighed. "Because it's a party. We're not just going to go in there and start looking for Steve right off; we've got to act like we belong."

"We?"

"You and me. I'm your date."

Bucky opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. No backup would be stupid, and Peggy was better at this high society stuff than he was. "Okay." Something occurred to him. "What about the German? I don't speak it, but Klimt's Austrian, so he does. And you said no magic, so I'm guessing a charm or something won't work."

"Talk to Howard," Gabe said as Peggy opened her mouth to speak. "Sorry," he said, looking over at her. "Were you gonna suggest the thing he and I were working on?"

"Yes," Peggy said. "Do your hair first so the dye can set and look more natural, then go and talk to Howard."

"You say, 'do your hair first' as if I have any idea how to change the color of my hair without magic," Bucky said.

Peggy realized he had a point, so she left the rest of the boys to go over security plans and went with Bucky. She directed him to the bathroom off of the office and came back not much later with a chair and a box of hair dye she had 'borrowed' from the back of Louise's closet. "I'll pay her back when she gets back to school," she said. "Have a seat."

It was very strange, sitting there with a towel around his neck and his head in the sink as Peggy mixed and poured and lathered his hair. Before she let him get up, she laid a cloth over his eyes and used an eyedropper and a Q-tip to brush some of the dye into his eyebrows, which he hadn't thought about until just then. "How do you know how to do all this?" Bucky asked. He didn't think Peggy dyed her hair.

"I help Louise with it sometimes," she replied. He heard a dry smile in her voice as she continued. "And I read the instructions on the side of the box."

After it all had a chance to set, she rinsed it out and dried his hair off, then gestured for him to get up and look at the mirror. Bucky's jaw dropped at the sandy-haired stranger staring back at him. "Whoa," he breathed, running a hand through his hair to make sure it was really his.

"That is a really different look for you," Peggy said, studying him thoughtfully. She shook her head. "Alright. Go see Howard. Learn German"

"How is he supposed to teach me German?" Bucky wondered. He figured Howard spoke it, but teaching it to him was going to take more than two days.

"Just go," Peggy said. "He'll explain it."

Howard did explain it, although in his typical fashion, it was in phrases too techno-babbly for Bucky to actually follow. The gist of it seemed to be that it was a spell. "A spell?" he confirmed. Howard nodded. "But magical concealment or enhancement or whatever is off the table for this one," he reminded him.

"That's why we're doing this now," Howard said. "See, if it was a disguise or something, the magic would still be happening, maintaining itself while you were there, and Zwart's detection spells would catch it. But this is more like…Okay, this is a bad example, but like if I injured you with magic. Like I cut a big gash in your arm."

"Uh huh," Bucky said warily.

"So, the magic, after I cast it, would fade away, but the effect would remain. The wound would still have to heal. Same principle here. The German in your head is like the wound—it'll linger after the magic is gone. Except, it won't hurt. I mean, it will hurt a little going in, probably. But I'm not damaging your brain or anything."

"You're not exactly filling me with confidence, here," Bucky said.

Howard smiled. "I told you it was a bad example. Don't worry, it's been tested. Me and Gabe have been working on this for a while. You're not a guinea pig; this is gonna work."

"Okay," Bucky said, still a little unsure. "And then, what, I'm just gonna know German?"

"For a while. We haven't been able to figure out how to get it to stick, but you'll have three days, which is enough time for you to do this mission and get back," Howard explained. He held up his wand. "You ready?"

Bucky wanted to say no, but there was no way he could pass for Klimt without speaking German, and if he couldn't pass for Klimt, he couldn't save Steve. "Do it," he said.

Howard started muttering and the end of his wand started glowing a light blue, and the inside of Bucky's head suddenly got very noisy. Someone was talking and it sounded German—he didn't understand it yet—but it was getting louder and louder and faster and faster, and all the words, instead of just passing through, were getting caught inside his brain. He could feel them piling up one on top of the other, quickly running out of room and pressing against the inside of his skull, and his head felt like a balloon and air kept getting pushed in and pushed in and it was about to pop.

Suddenly, it was quiet, though the pounding in his head remained. He took a step, staggered, and Howard was next to him with a hand around his arm. "It'll take a little while to settle," he said, steering him toward the couch in the corner. "Try to take a nap; that'll really help."

Bucky tried to argue that he had a lot he had to do to get ready for this mission, but his head was really pounding now, and his eyeballs felt like they were going to drum right out of their sockets. He lowered his eyelids to keep his eyeballs inside his head, then felt himself sinking down into the couch cushions, the rhythm in his head pounding him into unconsciousness.

When he woke up, he thought for a minute that whatever was pounding in his head was still going, but it turned out to be Howard hammering something on the other side of the room. "Hey, how're you feeling?" Howard asked, looking up from his hammering.

"Fine," Bucky said, rubbing the side of his head to make sure. "So, how do I know if it worked?"

Howard grinned. "It is working. I asked how you were doing in German and you just rolled right with it. This whole conversation is happening in German."

"Really?" It didn't sound any different to him, so he paid attention and started talking again. "So, I'm really talking in German right now? Without even trying?" Oh, yeah, he could hear it now. That was…really cool and really weird. "Wait, can I only talk in German now?" He wasn't sure how to stop.

"No, you just have to concentrate on the switch," Howard said. They spent a little while practicing switching back and forth until Bucky got the hang of it.

"Oh, good, you're here," Monty said, pushing the door open. His eyes landed on Bucky and went wide. "Wow." Oh, yeah, Bucky had forgotten about his hair. "Right, um," Monty continued, collecting himself. "I'm here for the German thing as well. Peggy has a lot of stuff she wants you to read," he told Bucky.

He thanked Howard and left, returning to where Peggy and the guys were strategizing and waiting out the surprised chorus of comments about his hair. Peggy handed him a folder she'd put together with as much of Klimt's life story as she could gather, pointing out significant names and dates he'd need to make sure he knew. Before he started reading, he wanted to know what they'd come up with so far, so they laid out the plan for him. Jacques and Monty were going to get the waiter, and Jacques was going to keep an eye on him while Monty went to the house. Dugan, Bucky and Peggy were going to take out Klimt, then Dugan would stand guard over him while Bucky and Peggy left from his house for the party. Gabe and Jim were going to work lookout around the house—Gabe would be listening in everywhere he could, and Jim would monitor the magical defenses and be on call in case they needed medical support.

"Okay, something about this has been bothering me," Bucky said.

"Your hair is bothering me," Jim said.

Bucky ignored him. "Is Zwart really going to throw a big party at his house with a hostage tied up in the basement or wherever? Won't he just take Steve somewhere else?"

"The place is big enough, there's no reason for the guests to come across wherever he's keeping Steve," Peggy said. "And our man, Ryan, hasn't taken his eyes off the house since we told him we were coming—Steve hasn't left."

"Alright," Bucky said.

"Now get back to your reading," Peggy told him. "Once the plan is finalized, we'll go over it and you can help us tighten it up then."

It felt weird not to be in on the planning part of the mission, but she was right. Bucky settled down in a corner away from them and started his reading. He decided the best way to memorize it was to just read it through, then start over, and do it again and again. He paused briefly for dinner, eating as he read, then was surprised when Peggy appeared to shoo him off to bed.

"No, I need to know this," he protested.

"Bucky, you've hardly slept since Steve went missing," she said. "We are heading into a dangerous mission, and you need a proper night's sleep—tonight _and_ tomorrow—so you can be on top of your game. You can pick this back up in the morning." She snatched the folder away from him and eyed him critically. "Do you need a sleeping potion?"

"No, I'll be okay," he told her. She was right, and he _was_ tired. He was still worried about what could be happening to Steve, though, so he headed down to the kitchen for a cup of Willow's tea to help him sleep. Though she cast several curious glances at him, she made no comment about his hair.

Bucky slept soundly, feeling better than he had all week when he got up, though he did yelp a little bit when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror and remembered what he had done to his hair. Jacques found that very amusing.

He spent the rest of the morning reading and re-reading his folder, and when he thought he was about to go crazy from staring at the same fifteen pages for so long, he got up and joined back in with the planning of security and transport for a little while. Peggy quizzed him on his reading material and decided he wasn't bad, but he wasn't perfect, so she sent him back to his corner to read. By the time he went to bed that night with another cup of Willow's tea in hand, his mind was reeling with what sports Klimt had played in university, the names of the Nazi Colonels he hunted pheasants with on the weekends, the plethora of girls he'd left behind in Vienna, and the name of his favorite opera house in Salzburg. He read over it all again one more time as they ate breakfast, and then it was time to hit the road.

Back to the safe house in Salzburg, they split from there to their various assignments. Gabe and Jim went directly to Zwart's house to start surveillance, Jacques and Monty to the waiter's home across town, and Peggy, Dugan and Bucky to Daniel Klimt's upscale apartment. He was out for the day, not expected back in until the afternoon, according to the doorman. Breaking in was a simple matter of sneaking up the stairs and picking the lock.

They spent most of the day going through everything for any more information that might have been important, with Dugan making sarcastic remarks about the swankiness of the rooms and furniture. "Cushy gig for me tonight, though," he said, leaning back on one of the sofas and resting his dirty boots on the mahogany table.

The key in the lock had them all springing to attention, then Dugan's Stunning spell had Klimt and the girl he was with hitting the floor before they knew anyone was in the room. (Peggy and Bucky wouldn't be using magic, but Dugan wasn't going near Zwart's house.) They were quickly tied up, briefly interrogated for any last-minute important information, and then it was time to get ready.

Bucky stood in Klimt's room, surveying himself in the mirror. He was wearing Klimt's dress uniform, a stark, crisp black with shining silver eagles on the lapels and a vivid red arm band emblazoned with a swastika. He swallowed down a lump of distaste. It was easy to think of Klimt as some spoiled stupid rich kid, but his rank was high enough that it would have taken more than just his dad's money to get him there. Bucky hated to think about what the person who was usually in this uniform had done to get his Captain's bars. He sighed and put his coat and hat on. Big picture. Saving Steve. He could play Nazi for a few hours.

He waited in the living room with Dugan, and was very aware of his jaw dropping when Peggy walked in from the spare room. She was wearing a slinky silver evening gown, diamonds sparkling on her ears and at her throat. Her hair was twisted up in an elaborate silver clip before falling in elegant curls back down her neck, and she'd done something different with the makeup around her eyes and it was hard to stop staring at them.

Bucky regained his composure before Dugan did and elbowed him in the side so he'd close his mouth. "You look, uh, you look…" Dugan stammered.

"You look great," Bucky said, moving to pick up the white fur coat she'd laid across a chair earlier.

"Thank you," she said, slipping her arms into the coat. "Shall we?"

Bucky took her arm in his and they went downstairs to call a taxi. They didn't talk much on the way. Bucky's nerves were really churning by the time they reached the house. He did dangerous things all the time, but with no wand or weapons he felt almost naked.

They took a moment outside the cab, under the pretense of straightening coats, for Bucky to make the conscious switch in his mind to German and try out a couple of phrases just to make sure. Peggy, by this time, was fluent, and it occurred to Bucky to wonder just how many languages she knew.

Satisfied that he was ready, they headed up the steps to the front door, where a waiting butler accepted their invitation card and let them in. "Whoa," Bucky said under his breath. Everything was rich marble and thick velvet and there was an actual crystal chandelier in the ceiling.

Peggy elbowed him surreptitiously. "Stop looking so impressed, you're used to this, remember?"

Bucky schooled his face into something calmer as two waiting attendants approached and took their coats and his hat. "So, what do we do now?" he asked.

"We mingle," she said, reaching up to smooth his hair out.

"I know that," he said, taking her arm in his again. "I meant, where do we start?" He knew enough about rich people to know you did things in a certain way, but he didn't know what they were.

"Let's start here," she said, nodding toward the man approaching them. Bucky swallowed hard and forced himself to smile. It was Zwart.

"Herr Zwart," he said, stepping forward with an extended hand. "Such a pleasure to meet you sir, a pleasure. Your invitation was so very kind."

Zwart took his hand and shook it. "It's Captain Klimt, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Bucky replied, inclining his head.

"A pleasure to meet you, Captain. I've heard good things about you. I must say, you look rather younger than your photographs."

Bucky laughed. "You're not the first to say it, sir, though it's very kind of you. It was a trick getting into bars in my university days with this face," he added.

Fortunately, Zwart laughed in response. "I'm sure it was." He turned to Peggy and Bucky allowed himself a little sigh of relief. He seemed to be passing so far. "And who is your lovely companion?"

"Elsa von Weir," Peggy said with a girlish giggle Bucky had never heard her make before. She extended her hand and curtsied slightly as Zwart kissed her fingers.

"Well, welcome, Captain, Miss von Weir. There are some other guests I must attend to, but, please, make yourselves comfortable," Zwart said, gesturing at the crowd of people in the ballroom beyond. "I am anxious to talk to you later, Captain. Your work in our eugenics program fascinates me."

"It would be my pleasure, sir," Bucky replied, though his face fell as he and Peggy walked away. He knew that was a big part of Klimt's job, but there hadn't been much information on it. "Why does he want to talk to me about eugenics? I don't know anything about eugenics."

"You're new in town, he's being polite, and, well, Hydra's probably interested in all the eugenics information it can find. Wanting to make more superior men and whatnot."

"Peggy, I can't talk to him about eugenics."

"Don't worry, you don't have to," Peggy assured him. "You've never been to a party like this before, have you?"

"Oh, yeah. Steve and me, we hit all the weekend galas at the Waldorf-Astoria when we're home."

"Shut up," Peggy said, though she smirked a little. "Look, he's going to be greeting people coming in for the next hour or so. Once everyone's here, he'll work his way through the important people, and you, Daniel Klimt, are not _that_ important. He's going to get to you much later in the evening."

"You sure?"

"Trust me. Besides," she added. "If things get sticky, I can pull you out."

"How?" he wondered. He didn't think Peggy knew any more about eugenics than he did.

She smiled. "Oh, people make a lot of indulgences for a young, silly girl."

"You're not a silly girl," he said automatically.

She smiled wider. "No. But no one here knows that, do they? Now, come on, Captain. Let's mingle."

They started wandering the main ballroom, making small talk with a few more people. "Bucky," Peggy sighed. "You don't have to hold my arm like you're escorting me down the stairs the whole time. Put your arm around my waist."

"What?"

"Like this," Peggy said, taking his hand and placing it on her hip, pulling her closer to him.

He instinctively pulled it back. "No, I…" He felt his face getting warm. This was Peggy. He wasn't supposed to touch her like_ that_.

"Bucky, a couple sneaking off to have a snog is the perfect cover for exploring the house, but before we do that, you've got to act like you actually like me first."

They had discussed that beforehand, but Bucky hadn't actually given any thought to what that entailed until now. "Yeah, I just, it's weird. I don't think Steve would like me being all handsy with you and everything."

Two men in Nazi uniforms walked by and Peggy leaned in against him, laughing softly as if he'd said something funny. "Since we're doing it to save his life," she said quietly. "I think he'd be okay with it." Though her body language was soft and flirtatious, there was something a little bit dangerous in her eyes when she looked up at him. "More importantly, you do not now nor will you ever need Steve's permission to touch me. You need mine. And right now, for this mission, you have it. So put your arm around my waist."

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied, sliding his arm around her.

She smiled again. "Good man. Come on." She slid her arm around his back and they started walking again.

Once they made it through a couple of conversations without getting their cover blown, Bucky started to relax. He chatted with Nazi officials and Hydra agents, recalling names from his folder and making up stories to go along with them. Someone asked about a mutual schoolmate, and Bucky shared a story that was actually something Jacques had done and changed the names and got a laugh. Someone else mentioned a Nazi officer he was supposed to serve under, and Bucky nodded and smiled and got a knowing wink when he said the rest was classified. Whenever questions started getting a little personal, he recalled something from the file and turned it back on the questioner—Do you still play poker with Gregor Schwartz? I haven't seen him in ages, how is he? Oh, yes, the opera last week was wonderful, which of Wagner's compositions is your favorite? And so on, and so forth. Everyone liked to talk about themselves.

"You're getting good at this," Peggy whispered from where she was hanging on his shoulder.

"Well, now that I'm sure no one's trying to kill me," he said. "This is a test I studied for."

"Can I offer you anything, sir?" came a familiar voice from behind him. He turned and saw Monty standing there with a tray.

"Thank you," Bucky said, picking up the least weird-looking snack on the tray. He didn't know what any of it was. He lowered his voice. "What have you found?"

"The west wing of the house is clear," Monty said quietly. "Kitchens, laundry, service entry. I've been through all of it and it's far too busy to have anyone tucked away. I even managed to sneak upstairs and give the servant's quarters a going over."

"Makes sense," Peggy said in a low voice. "He wouldn't want Steve somewhere he'd have to go through the servants to get to."

"My money is on the south wing," Monty replied. "Zwart's valet gave us all a rundown when we arrived, and we were told repeatedly to stay out of the south wing. I mean, those of us hired extra for tonight aren't supposed to go anywhere else, actually, besides the kitchen and the ballroom, but he was very firm on the south wing thing."

"Good place to start," Bucky said with a nod. "Thanks."

Monty nodded and continued his rounds with his tray. "Oh, and I'd keep an eye on him," he added before he got too far, nodding at the valet. "I think he's more dangerous than he looks."

Bucky and Peggy spent some more time meandering, surreptitiously eyeing the south side of the ballroom and watching who came and went. Peggy drifted away for a little while with a flock of giggling girls, and Bucky felt suddenly nervous without her attached to his side. He'd found himself in the company of several men ranging in age talking about cars. At least that was something he knew about, so he could chime in or spend the time when other people were talking watching the room without missing important details. Zwart was making his rounds of the people Bucky assumed were more important than him. He watched him slowly make his way around the room, and he clocked a couple of Hydra agents he'd recognized from the briefing photos who kept shooting glances at the south wing. Zwart hadn't spent a great amount of time with them that Bucky had noticed over the course of the evening, but he certainly had passed by them an awful lot—long enough for brief exchanges. Were they in on it? He'd been watching the valet too, and he'd also noticed, though he wanted to confirm it with Monty, that the valet, who'd been circling the ballroom like a vulture, had been MIA for about half an hour not long after Monty had come around with his tray. If you were going to hide an enemy super-soldier somewhere in your house, your valet would probably have to be in on it.

"Oh, Daniel, darling," Peggy said, appearing from nowhere and latching on to his arm and looking very excited. "There you are. Herr Zwart has got just the most _fab_ulous collection of art, and you'll never believe it, an actual Vermeer."

Bucky didn't entirely know what that meant, but he was clearly supposed to be excited about this, so he perked up. "Does he?"

"Yes!" Peggy enthused. "Just off in the south wing. Frau Zwart offered to take a group of us to see it, and I thought, oh, Daniel simply _must_ see this, so I had to come and fetch you at once. You don't mind, do you, gentlemen?" she asked, turning to the rest of the group with a slight pout. "If I borrow him for just a teensy little moment?"

The other men chuckled and smiled indulgently. "Of course, my dear," one of the older men said. He smiled at Bucky. "Quite a charming creature you've got there, Captain."

Bucky wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just smiled as he stood up and slipped his arm around her waist again and followed her. "You said 'us'," he leaned in and whispered. "More people going to see this painting than you and me?"

"Mm-hmm," Peggy nodded. "I don't think we can break away from a smaller group like this without being missed, but we can do a bit of reconnaissance before we slip back later."

He nodded.

"I did have to tell her you liked art so she would wait for me to get you," she added. "Very quickly: Johannes Vermeer. Dutch Baroque master. It's called _The Art of Painting_. Artist's studio, thought to be a self-portrait of Vermeer, though it's from the back so we can't be sure. The book the model is holding identifies her as the Muse of History. Say something about the magnificent use of light and you should be alright."

Bucky looked down at her, raising an impressed eyebrow. "How do you know all that?"

She smiled. "Steve and I talk about more than missions, you know."

They joined the tour group, and Mrs. Zwart led them down into the south wing. Thus far, nothing about it seemed overly sinister. There were lots of paintings and little statues and vases and things that looked expensive, and it was entirely possible that the waitstaff had been told to keep out so they wouldn't steal anything, but it had a secluded feel that made it a good possibility. They stopped in front of a painting that seemed to be the one they'd been brought to see. Bucky made the appropriate impressed sounds and got a chorus of appreciative nods when he said something about how masterful the command of light was.

"Oh, indeed," Mrs. Zwart said. "You are an admirer of the Baroque, Captain?"

"Oh, yes," Bucky agreed. It was actually quite a nice painting. The level of tiny details in it was impressive. "Johannes Vermeer in particular—he's just such a master of the Dutch technique." He nodded up at the painting. "Do you suppose that's really a self-portrait, as so many people say?"

As he'd been hoping, the question sparked a conversation among the rest of the group. Peggy nodded slightly in approval, and they both took the moment to scan as much of the long corridor as possible, counting doors, noting lights, and looking for anything that might be out of the ordinary. Mrs. Zwart escorted them all back to the party, and as they were leaving the hall, they ran into Zwart himself waiting at the end. For a moment, Bucky was afraid they'd been figured out somehow, but Mrs. Zwart chuckled. "Oh, don't look so grumpy, Hugo. I was only showing them the Vermeer."

Zwart's stern face softened. "My dear, must you do that with all our guests? You'll give the impression we're showing off." The group chuckled at that.

"So what if we are?" she replied with a smile. "There's no point paying all that money for a painting if you're not going to let people enjoy it." More laughter at that, and the group dispersed back into the main party.

"A moment, Captain," Zwart said, catching Bucky's arm. "I didn't know you were so interested in the arts."

"I have a soft spot for the Dutch masters," Bucky said, nervous again. Was this another test? "A private passion of mine in university, but one I rarely get to indulge these days. It's very kind of your wife to allow me to see it."

Zwart nodded, seemingly in approval. "You're surprisingly well-rounded for a young man, Captain. The arts as well as the sciences. But come, while I have a moment, you must tell me about this program of yours."

"Oh, of course. Well," Bucky began. Where was Peggy? She said she would help him out if this happened.

"Daniel, dear, stop dawdling, I—oh! Pardon me, Herr Zwart," Peggy said, returning from where she'd been several steps ahead. She did that little curtsy thing again. "Such a lovely painting. It was really too good of you to let us see it."

"Not at all, my dear," Zwart replied.

"I suppose you were wanting to talk business with Daniel now," she continued, and there was that little pout again.

"You had something else in mind?" he asked.

"Oh, no, I don't want to keep you, I'm sure," she said quickly, blushing as though she was embarrassed to say whatever was next. "It's only, the music is too lovely, and Daniel promised me we could dance, only he's been so busy chatting all evening he hasn't danced with me once!"

Zwart chuckled. "Really, that's too bad of you, Captain, keeping this charming young thing waiting like that." He waved them towards the ballroom. "We can continue this later."

They thanked him and hurried off to the ballroom, joining the couples in the center of the room spinning to a slow waltz. "I've gotta say, this wasn't a skill set I pictured you having," Bucky told her.

Peggy shrugged and smiled. "Well, when people expect you to be a silly girl, you might as well learn to work it. Did you notice the far end of the wing while we were down there?"

"Low lights and a bolt on the door? Yep." He spun, dipped her down, pulled her back up close.

"Not that a bolt would keep Steve in, but it's worth investigating," she replied. "Did you see the other four doors at that end of the hallway? All closed."

"While the rest of them were open," he finished. "Definitely a suspicious hallway." He twirled her out and back again. "Should we check it out after the song's over?"

"Let's give it a few more songs," she said. "We probably shouldn't be the first couple to sneak off." She ran a hand playfully up his neck and tousled his hair. "And go on and slide your hand down a bit lower. When we do sneak off, we don't want there to be any doubts about what we're going to do."

They danced a little while longer. The music was good and Peggy was a great dancer, and if they weren't at a party hosted by one of the most dangerous wizards in Hydra and surrounded by people who were almost all involved in one kind of evil organization or another, it would have actually been kind of nice.

Eventually, Peggy decided it was safe to slip away, so they twined their fingers together and leaned in their heads in close and laughed softly as they edged toward the main door of the ballroom. Bucky caught a knowing glance from one of the men he'd been talking about cars with, and he blushed a little but managed a sly wink.

They carefully made their way to the entrance to the south wing. The valet (who Monty confirmed _had _been gone a while earlier) was down at the far end of the ballroom, Zwart was talking to a Nazi General, and the two Hydra guys he'd spotted earlier were over by the buffet. They were still careful, slipping off into the hallway. Just because he'd spotted two Hydra agents didn't mean there weren't more.

"Okay, how do we want to split this up?" Bucky asked. "Bottom floor first?" The whole hallway was in view from where they stood, but there were two levels.

"Yeah, I think so," Peggy agreed. Bucky nodded. If he was hauling a prisoner around as heavy as Steve, he wouldn't want to have to drag him up the stairs. "The bolted door seems the obvious place to start."

Still holding hands until they were sure they were far enough down the hallway to be out of sight, they headed for the bolted door at the end. Up close, it didn't look like it was quite what they were looking for. True, the bolt was on the outside, which generally meant something was being kept in instead of out, but it wasn't a particularly heavy-duty bolt, and the door was made of wood. Even semi-conscious, Steve could probably punch through that.

There was a lock through the bolt, and Peggy slipped off one of her earrings and twisted it, unscrewing the top and bottom and revealing a thin spike of metal. She handed it to Bucky and he started picking the lock, though he was momentarily distracted when she tugged on the front of her dress and stuck her hand down inside like she was digging for something.

"What are you…"

Her hand emerged with what Bucky recognized as the transmitter Howard had pieced together for them. In order to avoid detection by the security spells, it didn't operate on magic at all, and was simple enough that it only sent and received in Morse Code.

"Oh," he said, blushing a little and turning his attention back to the lock. "I was wondering where you put that." He heard her clicking a message to Gabe as he fiddled with the lock. "Got it," he told her.

"Gabe says it's clear outside. I told him we're starting the search properly now. Everyone else is alright so far." She slid the transmitter back inside her dress. "Go on," she said, nodding at the door.

Bucky eased the bolt open. Carefully pulling back the door, they peered into the room beyond. It was smaller than Bucky would have thought, and while he saw no sign of Steve, he could hear something breathing.

"That…doesn't sound like a person," Peggy said cautiously.

"No," Bucky agreed. They opened the door the rest of the way, and the light from the hallway illuminated the room and woke whatever the hell that thing was up. Something the size of a dog lunged at them, a flash of fur and scales and teeth and too many heads, and Bucky swallowed down a yelp and yanked the door shut. He heard the thing squawk as the chain around its neck pulled it back, and he and bolted the door and snapped the lock shut again. "What the hell was that!?"

"I have no idea," Peggy said, the arch of her eyebrows the only outward sign of the height of her alarm. "Something in the experimental evil wizard science realm, I would imagine."

"Right. Well, let's try door number two."

Thankfully, nothing jumped out at them after they picked the lock for the next room. The only thing they saw was stacks of notebooks and papers and a radio. "Study, maybe?" Bucky guessed. He nodded at the first aid kit on the desk. "Maybe an observation room for that hell-beast in there?"

"Probably," Peggy agreed. "Let's lock it back."

Re-locking the doors was harder than picking them open, but they got it done and repeated the process for the next two rooms. Laboratories of some kind—pickled things in jars and bubbling cauldrons and vials with brightly-colored potions. Given Zwart's position, it was probably all pretty important stuff, but none of it had anything to do with Steve.

"This is a bit more promising," Peggy mused as they stepped into the last of the cluster of locked rooms—the one furthest from the creature. It was a large study, with a rich mahogany desk and dark leather couches, soft light coming from expensive-looking lamps on the side tables. The carpet was thick and plush, and the walls were lined with heavy shelves of neatly stacked books and notebooks. Tasteful artwork in thin silver frames hung between the shelves. Casting an eye over the correspondence on the desk, Peggy nodded. "I think this is Zwart's personal study."

"Well, Steve's not in it," Bucky said. It was a large room, but not large enough to hide someone in.

"No," Peggy agreed. "But this is where Zwart keeps all of his important papers. There may very well be something here that tells us where he is."

That was a fair point, so while Peggy took the desk, Bucky dug through the drawers of the end tables. When those produced nothing, he joined Peggy at the desk, working on the side she hadn't gotten to yet. He was flipping through a handful of papers when several things happened at once that made his breath hitch in his throat—his eyes caught Steve's name and details of the setup at the farmhouse in the letter in his hand, and his ears caught the soft sound of feet on the carpet outside and the click of the doorknob.

Fortunately, the door opened in such a way that whoever was behind it would have to open it all the way and look around it before seeing the desk, which gave them two, maybe three seconds. Bucky dropped the papers and snapped his drawer shut, slapped Peggy's hand away from the one she was reaching for and gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling back onto the sofa against the wall. She squeaked in surprise, and Bucky grimaced and hissed, "Sorry!" before diving for the couch and landing halfway on top of her, knocking her down flat against the cushions and starting to kiss her.

Thankfully, instead of slapping him senseless, Peggy realized what he was doing and started kissing him back, thrusting one hand up into his hair and using the other to yank on the knot in his tie and pull him in closer.

"Ahem!" The overhead lights clicked on and a very displeased throat cleared itself from the doorway. They both sat up quickly, red-faced, and met the eyes of Zwart's valet, staring at them coldly. "This is Master Zwart's private study. What are you doing in here?"

"Oh, we're _so_ sorry!" Peggy said as she hurriedly straightened her hair. "We were just looking for a bit of privacy, is all. We didn't know we weren't supposed to be in here." Her face was so apologetically earnest that Bucky almost believed her.

The valet's thin face seemed to get longer as he frowned suspiciously. "This room was locked."

"Oh, but it wasn't!" Peggy said quickly, eyes going wide. "It wasn't, was it, Daniel?" she went on, looking at Bucky pleadingly. "We would never have done a thing like that!" She looked so innocent and offended all at once that Bucky had to fight down the urge to laugh.

"Really, we're very sorry," Bucky said, running an embarrassed hand over the hair Peggy had disheveled and trying to flatten it back down. "It really was, it was open. We didn't mean to cause any trouble." He got to his feet and extended a hand to Peggy. "Come on, Elsa, we should go. We're very sorry," he said again.

Peggy let him pull her to her feet and started straightening her dress, blushing. "We really _do_ apologize, sir," she said with a quick curtsy.

"We hope we didn't cause you any trouble," Bucky added, fixing his tie as he ushered Peggy to the door. "We'll just go back to the party, and…sorry."

"I think that's best," the valet replied coolly.

Peggy flashed him a dazzling smile, reminiscent of a child who'd just gotten out of trouble. "Oh, thank you, sir!" She laid a hand softly on his arm, making his eyebrows go up in surprise. "You're so kind. We'll stay out of trouble, we promise." She moved for the door and Bucky saw something soften slightly in the valet's stern face and he knew they'd pulled it off. Man, she was good!

"See that you do," he told them, waving them out. "Oh, and, sir?" Bucky looked back at him and he tapped the side of his face just above his mouth. Bucky put a hand to his own face and pulled it away stained with the deep red of Peggy's lipstick. He blushed and wiped the rest of it away, but shrugged a little and smirked and he thought he saw a flicker of amusement in the valet's eye.

He wrapped his arm around Peggy and held her close as they headed back down the hall, not saying anything until he heard the door to the study lock behind them. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the valet was not there—probably checking to make sure they hadn't disturbed anything. They passed a few more doors and then ducked into an empty room.

"Peggy, I'm so sorry," Bucky said quickly. He had never felt more embarrassed in his life. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No, Bucky, it's okay," she said, and now that they were out of sight of the valet, he could see how nervous she'd been as she tried to catch her breath.

"No, I just, I didn't know what else to…" He hadn't been able to think of anything else to do to explain their presence.

"Bucky, it's fine," she repeated, breathing a little steadier now. "It was very quick thinking."

Yeah, that had been their whole cover, but it just felt wrong. It was all in the name of subterfuge, but he felt like he'd forced himself on her and it made him sick to his stomach. "I just, I hope you know I would _never_ do something like that—"

She reached up and put a hand over his mouth to stop him talking. "Bucky," she said. "I do know that. You had to think fast, you saved our lives, and it is very okay with me that you did that. It's really alright." She must have been hanging around with Steve too long, because her voice sounded an awful lot like his did when he really meant something.

"Alright," he said, feeling some of the weight lift out of his stomach. "I didn't hurt you when I pushed you, did I?"

"No," she assured him. She smiled then. "And, you know, I have to say, you do live up to the gossip."

"Huh?"

She smiled even wider. "Oh, girls talk, Bucky."

"About…about me?"

"Oh, yes, they talk about you," she said with a grin. "The general consensus is that you, aside from being a quite a gentleman, are a very good kisser."

"Um…" Bucky felt his cheeks going warm again.

Peggy smirked. "They're not wrong."

"Um, th—thank you?" He really didn't know what to do with that.

She laughed softly and went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "You are sweet, Bucky." Then she rested her hand on his arm and squeezed it, her hazel eyes blazing sincerity. "And we really are alright, you and me."

The rest of the weight lifted out of his stomach. "Okay." He smiled. "Thanks."

"Now," Peggy said softly. "I think, after the valet leaves, we need another look at that study."

Bucky nodded. "You saw his eyes?" Bucky's eyes had been locked on the valet's face the whole time, looking for any sign things were about to go wrong. The valet's eyes had been fairly sternly fixed on them too, but they kept darting quickly to the side, and he'd relaxed just a tad too much when he seemed to decide they were innocent.

"Oh, yes," she agreed. "There was something in that back corner he was worried we might've found. An awfully innocent-looking corner for that sort of concern."

Bucky nodded, then placed a finger to his lips. Footsteps again, and through the crack in the door, he saw the valet walking back down the hall. He didn't look angry, or panicked or rushed, so he must have satisfied himself that they really hadn't disturbed anything. They both held their breath as he passed by, then waited a few minutes more.

"Round two?" Bucky asked quietly.

"Round two," Peggy agreed.

They slipped back into the hall, shooting careful glances back behind them in the direction of the party and onto the landings above. They seemed to be clear. The door to the study was locked again, but Bucky still had Peggy's lockpick and had it open again soon. This time, he locked it back behind them.

"Okay," he said quietly, moving to the corner the valet had kept looking at. "What didn't he want us to see?" The corner seemed innocent enough. One wall held a bookshelf filled with what looked like scientific journals. The other wall held only a painting of a waterfall in a large silver frame.

"Well, it could be anything in there," Peggy said, waving at the shelf. "He might keep some of his research there or something." Bucky didn't think that was it, and she didn't sound particularly convinced of the theory either. "Or…" She trailed off, her eyes drifting around the room before coming to land on the waterfall painting. She smiled, running her hands along the frame, then tilted it to the left. The whole wall swung back like a door. "It might be that."

"I think it's that," Bucky replied. He looked down at her and smiled. "Nice catch."

She shrugged, but she was smiling. "It was a lot bulkier than the other frames. Didn't match."

He grinned and offered her his arm, and they carefully moved forward into the corridor behind the wall. It swung shut of its own accord behind them. Ahead of them was a low, flickering light—candles. The little corridor turned sharply, then opened up into a low stone room. An iron chandelier lit with candles illuminated most of the room, and a soft, rhythmic clicking noise filled the air. Bucky's eyes followed the noise and then his heart leapt up into his throat. On the darker side of the room, unaware of their presence and staring vacantly into space, was Steve.

"Steve!" He was sitting in a metal chair that was bolted to the floor, restraints that covered his forearms and calves holding him in place. He sat there shivering in nothing but his shorts, his uniform in a bloody pile on the floor behind him. Anger burned hot in Bucky's chest as his eyes took in Steve's exposed skin—he was covered in blood and bruises and burn marks, some of it old and healing and some of it obviously fresh. Close to, Bucky realized the look in his eyes wasn't one of vacancy—he was clearly somewhere else right now, but his gaze was distantly focused on something behind Bucky. Whatever it was, he couldn't look away.

Bucky turned to see what it was he was looking at and discovered the source of the clicking—on a small table opposite Steve was a little metal stand, about a foot tall. From the crossbar on top hung five little metal spheres in a line, each on their own wire, and they were moving. The one on the end swung down and hit the line of the others—_click_—which popped the one on the other end up, then it swung back down—_click_—and the first one popped up again. Bucky remembered seeing something like it in grade school in science class—something to do with momentum, or the transfer of motion, or something like that. It had been kind of fun to play with, but this one felt different. It felt…sinister. Definitely magical. And it…it kept clicking and Bucky blinked heavily, and, wow, it really was hard to stop looking at…

No. No! Bucky blinked again and drew in a sharp breath, and he wasn't sure if he could just look away from it so he spun his whole body around instead and instantly his head felt clear again. "Whoa," he breathed. That had taken an insane amount of effort, and he wasn't the one half out of it and beat to hell. No wonder Steve couldn't stop looking at it. And… "Peggy!" he hissed, grabbing her shoulders and spinning her away from the thing.

She blinked rapidly and inhaled sharply. "Bloody hell," she whispered.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. He could still hear it clicking behind them, and he didn't think it would be a good idea to touch a dark object like that, but he had to get it to stop somehow. He looked back behind him, eyes down to avoid catching the device again, and found the leg of the table it was resting on. He kicked it and knocked the table over, and the little metal thing fell to the floor with a clatter and was silent.

He looked back up at Steve, hoping he'd snap out of it now that the thing had stopped. His focused stare was gone, but the distant haze remained. Bucky felt rage rising again in his chest. What the hell had they done to him?! They hadn't hurt him, no—the neat precision of the cuts, the depth of the burns, the sheer volume of the bruising—they hadn't hurt him, they'd _tortured_ him. He took a step forward and Steve shrank back with a barely audible whimper, and fury burned hot in Bucky's chest, in his gut, in his soul. They were going to pay for this.

"Bucky," Peggy said, and she was there at his side again, her hand on his arm. "Bucky, you need to calm down."

He whirled to face her, furious disbelief in his eyes. "Calm down?" he repeated. His magic was vibrating under his skin, uncontrolled and enraged, and he was as far from calm as he could be. "Look at what they did to him! How can you—"

"I know!" Peggy snapped, and Bucky saw the same fire in her eyes that he felt in his heart. "And believe me, I am _furious_. But we are still in the middle of a dangerous mission, and we need to keep our heads." She leaned in closer. "And _you_ need to calm down because you're scaring him," she finished.

Bucky's eyes darted back to Steve, and he _did_ look scared, shrinking back into his chair as far as his restraints would allow, eyes wide and frightened and breath coming in uneven hitches. Remorse immediately gushed through Bucky's body, quenching the rage-fueled fire in his soul. But that magic had to go somewhere, and he snarled and released it behind him in a wild burst that he felt hit the table on the floor and shatter the little metal clicking thing into a thousand pieces.

"I'm sorry, Stevie, I'm sorry," he whispered, leaning down a little so he was on eye level with Steve. Steve was still breathing raggedly, so Bucky reached out carefully and took his head in his hands, pulling it forward gently and tucking it under his chin as he hugged him as best as he could around the restraints. "Sh, sh, it's okay," he soothed, patting the back of his head. "It's okay. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. It's okay now, Stevie, you're gonna be okay. I've got you."

Steve's breathing was starting to slow down again, and Bucky closed his eyes and let out a stuttering breath of his own, fighting back the urge to cry. "It's okay," he whispered again. "You're gonna be okay." He pulled back a little to look at him, his hands sliding down his neck, and he leaned over to look as the right one caught on something and Steve flinched.

With the angle Steve was sitting, Bucky hadn't seen it from where he came in, but there in the side of Steve's neck was a large needle, thin plastic tubing leading away to an IV stand further back in the dark. Bucky swallowed down another wave of anger before it had time to build. "Peggy," he said softly, nodding at Steve's neck. Her breath went very quiet and her lips went very thin and she nodded. She could see it.

"Let's get that out, huh?" Bucky said, turning back to Steve. He carefully peeled up the tape holding the needle in place. Underneath, the skin was red and swollen around the needle, tinged with dark green from whatever it was they were pumping into him. "Okay," Bucky said, placing his fingers on either side of the needle. He pulled on it gently and Steve let out a soft whimper as it tugged on the tender skin. "I know it hurts, I'm sorry," Bucky said. The needle slid free and he tossed it aside, pressing his sleeve carefully over the blood that welled up in its wake. "There we go. That feels better, doesn't it?"

Steve was breathing a little easier now, and Bucky pulled him back slowly into another hug. For a minute he just held on to him, trying to help him feel calm, to feel safe, and just assuring himself that Steve was still there. "You're gonna be okay. Whatever they did to you, we're gonna fix it." He pulled back, leaving his hands on Steve's face and looking into his glassy eyes with a watery smile. "We're gonna make it better and you're gonna be okay, Stevie, I swear."

Steve didn't look scared anymore, but he didn't respond, just blinking slowly. "Hey," Bucky said. "I know that stuff did a number on you, but I'm getting worried here, man." He rubbed his thumb gently across his cheek, mindful of the long slash under his eye. "Can you give me a little something? Just let me know you're in there."

For a long moment, nothing. Then Steve blinked, then he blinked again, and again, a little faster, like he was trying to pull something into focus.

"There you go, Stevie, come on," Bucky said encouragingly. Steve blinked again and Bucky smiled. "Hey, there you are."

Steve was looking at him blearily, confused and sick and still a little lost, but he was in there. His eyebrows furrowed, like he was squinting to see him even though he was all of eight inches away. " 'uck?" he rasped.

A wide grin split Bucky's face. "Yeah, Stevie, it's me."

"R'ly here?"

"I'm really here," he replied, pressing his hands more firmly to his face.

Steve blinked again, then sagged down in relief, a crooked, drunken, but happy smile on his face. "Foun' me."

"Yeah, I did."

"Knew y' would." His crooked smile got a little bigger. "Always fin' me."

A lump rose up in Bucky's throat, and he had to swallow it back down before he could reply. "That's right, I do," he said, his voice rough with emotion. Everything they'd done to Steve, and who knew where the hell his head had been, but he'd never doubted, just trusting Bucky to come get him. "And I always will."

Steve smiled contentedly and let his head loll back against the chair. "Hey, no, stick with me, man," Bucky said, patting his cheek as his eyes started to glaze over again. "You ready to get out of here?"

"Uh huh," Steve said softly.

"Okay." Bucky started working at the restraints with the lockpick he used on the door, but it wasn't big enough. He straightened up, patting Steve's leg. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"Wh—where y' goin'?" Steve asked, and it broke Bucky's heart to see the fear that jumped back into Steve's eyes.

"Just to get something to open these with," he said, tapping the cuff around Steve's arm with his knuckle. He squeezed Steve's shoulder reassuringly. "I'll be back, I promise. Look, turn your head like this," he said, nudging the side of Steve's face. "And you can watch me go, alright?"

Steve's head rolled in the direction Bucky nudged it. "Oh, 's Peggy," he said, spotting her at the desk in the corner. "I like Peggy."

Bucky smiled and patted Steve's cheek. "I know you do. And I'm just going over to her and I'm coming right back, okay?"

"'kay."

Bucky hurried over to Peggy. "Hey, do you have anything longer I can use to get those cuffs open? And what are you doing?"

She paused in her search of the desk to unclasp her necklace. "Yeah, here." She twisted the large diamond on the front and it opened, a long, thin piece of metal unfolding from inside. She swallowed hard and nodded over at Steve. "They obviously wanted something out of him. If they got anything, I need to find it and destroy it. Don't look at me like that, Bucky. I hate that I have to think this way, but it's my job."

"Steve wouldn't—" Bucky began.

"I know he would never give them anything," she cut him off. "Not willingly," she added. She shook her head. "But Zwart is a wizard and a scientist, and there are plenty of ways to get something out of someone unwillingly."

A sick knot twisted in Bucky's stomach. He hadn't thought of that. And whatever that green stuff was they'd been pumping into Steve's neck… There _were_ a lot of nasty ways someone could be made to talk. "You mean like Veritaserum?"

"Well, not that exactly, but something like it," Peggy said. "Veritaserum doesn't work on Steve."

"It doesn't?" Bucky asked.

She shook her head. "Professor Erskine built an immunity to it into the super-soldier serum. He was very intentional about it. But that doesn't mean there aren't other things that might work."

Bucky nodded grimly. "Alright." He took the longer lockpick and headed back to Steve.

Steve still had his head rolled over in their direction, though his eyes were drifting shut as he watched him walk back. "Hey, Stevie, you hanging in there?" Bucky asked, kneeling next to the chair to start work on the locks.

"Mm-hmm."

Down on this level, Bucky could see in the darkness behind him the broken remains of another chair and smaller cuffs stacked up in the corner. He smiled. He knew Steve would have put up a fight. And it went a long way toward explaining the drugs in the IV and the evil clicking thing in a way that was a little bit less worrying than it could have been—at least they weren't poisoning him or anything. They'd just had to get creative with a way to subdue him. Steve was a hard one to keep down.

It didn't take him too long to get the cuffs open, though he had to hop up and catch him to keep him from slumping forward out of the chair. "S'ry," Steve mumbled into Bucky's shoulder.

"It's not your fault, Stevie," Bucky assured him, patting the back of his head. "Don't worry about it, okay? I've got you."

"Don' think I c'n walk," he muttered.

"Hey, look at me," Bucky said, crouching down to look him in the eye. "That's never stopped me from gettin' you out of trouble before, has it? Just because you're bigger than me now, don't think I won't carry you."

Steve blinked red, runny eyes up at him. "Thanks," he whispered.

Bucky wasn't sure where he could touch Steve that wouldn't hurt, but he finally worked his way under Steve's left arm, which looked less injured than the right. Carefully, he straightened back up, pulling Steve up with him. He shifted and adjusted once they were upright until all of Steve's weight was resting on him, and, holy cow, he was heavy, but he was never gonna be too heavy for Bucky. "Alright." He patted his arm. "Let's blow this joint." He looked over to where Peggy was. "Peggy, we gotta go."

She hurried over. "I haven't finished yet. There's nothing written down, but there could be memories in a Pensieve, or blood samples, or—"

"Peggy, I know, but I can't get him out of here on my own," Bucky said. "I can't carry him and fight at the same time." Avoiding a fight would be ideal, but he wasn't taking chances, not now, and he wasn't leaving Peggy here. An idea struck him. He nodded up at the iron chandelier. "Torch the place," he said.

"What?"

"Knock a couple of those candles off and torch the room. The secret wall will keep it from spreading to the rest of the house and it'll destroy anything you might have missed. Then we'll get Steve out, and we'll send Jacques in to search the rest of the house."

Peggy nodded. "That'll work."

Bucky turned and started moving Steve back to the corridor that led to the study. He wasn't sure how they'd get out from there, especially with the shape Steve was in, but it was the only way out. And Steve was still shivering, and Bucky didn't want to try to force him back into the bloody mess of his uniform, but there were blankets on the couches in the study, and that would be something.

"Hey, Buck?" Steve rasped as they walked.

"Yeah?"

"Y' sure y're r'ly you?"

"Yeah," Bucky replied, squeezing his arm firmly. "I'm really me, Stevie, I promise."

"Thought so," Steve agreed. "But y' look weird."

Bucky absorbed that for a minute as they walked. Oh, right. "You mean because of my hair?"

"Mm-hmm."

Bucky smiled. "I was just trying out a new look for the party tonight."

"Don' like it," Steve declared.

That got a laugh out of Bucky. "You know what? I don't either. I'll fix it when we get home."

"Good."

The click of Peggy's heels on the stone floor told Bucky she'd caught up with them as they reached the door. Fortunately, this side had a handle and was easy enough to open. Peggy went first into the study in case it was occupied, although Bucky wasn't sure what she was going to do without weapons or a wand.

"Clear," she told him.

The clock on the mantel chimed softly. "Time zit?" Steve asked.

"Midnight," Bucky answered. He lowered him down carefully onto the nearest couch, pulling the throw from the back and wrapping it around him.

"Vulture guy'll be back soon," Steve said, sinking back against the cushions and closing his eyes.

"The valet?" Bucky guessed. With his long, solemn face and hooked nose, Bucky supposed the comparison was fair enough.

"Mm," Steve grunted. "'posed t' change th' green stuff." That one took a second to decipher, but he probably meant the potion in the IV.

"Okay," Bucky said. "So, we need to get out of here."

"Actually," Peggy said thoughtfully. "This could work."

"What?" Bucky asked. "No, we need to go!"

"Trust me, Bucky," Peggy said.

He had no idea what her plan was, but she was right. He'd been trusting her so far and everything had worked, and he knew she wouldn't do anything that would put Steve in danger. "Okay. What do I do?"

"Get him over onto that couch behind the door."

Steve grunted unhappily at being forced to move, but he allowed Bucky to get him upright again and even tried to help a little. Bucky was just getting him settled again when he heard a key click in the lock. "Sh," he whispered to Steve, and he was instantly quiet. By the door, Peggy had kicked her heels off and was standing ready in a fighting stance, two long, thin stilettos in her hands and where the hell had she gotten those?

The valet stepped in and Peggy lunged forward, whirling and slashing, and the valet yelped and backpedaled in the direction of one of the shelves. Bucky was on his feet to help, but Peggy was already kicking away a knife that had appeared in the valet's hand, slamming him into the side of the shelf, then one stiletto and then the other was stabbing through each of his shoulders and into the wood of the shelf behind, pinning him in place with a painful howl. One of her hands flew back, slid a third piece of metal out of the clip holding her hair up and flicked it, sending a long, telescoping blade out to lock in place with a click and pressing it against the valet's throat all in one fluid motion. Bucky had only made it as far as the door.

"Another sound and I'll slit your throat, are we clear?" Peggy hissed. The valet nodded. "Bucky, shut the door."

Bucky did, peeking out to make sure no one was coming, then picked up the key the valet had dropped and locked them in. Steve was slumped over sideways on the couch, smiling sleepily in Peggy's direction. "She's good."

"Yeah, she is," Bucky agreed, still feeling somewhat awed.

Still keeping her knife at the valet's throat, Peggy pulled out the transmitter and tossed it to Bucky. "Tell Gabe we found him, and to get Monty out and get Jacques the hell over here. And get Jim around to this window."

Bucky started clicking the little device, one ear on Peggy and the valet.

"Now," she said in a sweet tone that was by far the most frightening one Bucky had ever heard her use. "You're going to get us out of here."

"I am?" the valet asked, far less confidently than Bucky knew he'd meant to sound.

"You are." She nodded at the window, then reached a hand into the man's pocket and pulled out his wand. "Disable all the security spells on the window."

"I—" he started to protest, and Peggy pulled the knife from his throat, stabbed him abruptly just below the sternum, then pressed it against his throat again.

"Now," she snapped.

He nodded, gasping, and reached up to take his wand with a shaking hand. "I need to be over—"

She punched him where she'd stabbed him and he would have hit the ground if he wasn't pinned to the shelf. "You can do it from here," she said. She pressed the knife harder against his throat until a thin line of red appeared. "And you will remove every single spell that is on that window, and you will not raise one alarm or I will kill you and I will do it _very_ slowly, is that understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he whispered.

Bucky could feel magic moving around the window, though there was no other hint that the spells were changing. After a few minutes, the valet dropped the wand. "That's it," he said.

"It had better be," Peggy replied. "Bucky, is Jim here yet?"

Bucky looked out the window, careful not to touch it in case some of the spells were still active. He spotted Jim creeping along the hedges, and in another minute, he was at the window. "Jim, what's the status of the security spells on the window?" he asked.

Jim waved his wand at the window. "All down," he declared.

Peggy turned back to the valet. "Thank you for your cooperation." She removed the knife from his throat and punched him hard, knocking his head back into the wood and slamming him into unconsciousness. She yanked the knives out of his shoulders and let him slide into a heap on the floor, crouching down to wipe the blood off the blades on his jacket.

Jim let out a low whistle. "Man, I'm glad she's on our side."

"Tell me about it," Bucky agreed, working with Jim to shove the heavy window open.

Jim clambered up and in, his eyes narrowing in displeasure as he caught sight of Steve on the couch. "Hey there, Cap," he said. Steve's eyes blinked open groggily. "Good to see you."

"You too," Steve croaked.

"Where's it hurt?" Jim asked, passing his wand over him.

"Ev'rywhere," Steve replied.

Bucky swallowed down a lump of nausea at Steve's reply, but left Jim to his work, moving over to Peggy. She was folding her knives back in on themselves and replacing them in her hair clip, which was evidently more of a process than getting them out. "Hey," he told her. She looked up. "Anybody ever tell you that you are incredible?"

She smiled. "You're not so bad yourself. We make a pretty good team."

"We sure do," he agreed. "You ready to get out of here?"

"Oh, hell, yes," she enthused.

They moved back over to where Jim was sitting with Steve. "Well?" Bucky asked.

"He's a mess," Jim replied. "But he'll live."

Bucky smiled, relief undoing some of the knot in his stomach.

"Needs more than I can do here, though," Jim continued. "Do you know what this stuff is they dosed him with?"

"No."

"Well, it's a hell of a sedative, whatever else it is, and it's making it hard for me to heal around it. I could do it, but Rains could do it faster, and the less magic we do in here, the better." Jim eyed the window. "Let me go down first, and I'll help you get him out."

It took some work getting Steve out the window, even though the drop to the ground was only four feet. Jacques had shown up by the time they were out, and he hopped up eagerly back into the house once Peggy had told him what to look for. Gabe was going to stay behind and act as backup until he was out. Monty was going to meet up with Dugan and they were going to get back to the safehouse and take the fireplace home. The rest of them were going by Portkey. Jacques tossed one of the study chairs out the window for them, and they hauled it and Steve out past the boundary of the house. Peggy used Jim's wand to turn the chair into a Portkey, then they sat Steve down in it, the rest of them holding on to the frame.

"Alright, Stevie," Bucky said, one hand on the arm of the chair and one on Steve's shoulder—both for assurance and to keep him from falling out. "Let's go home."

* * *

_The team has their Captain back and it's time to go home. I know it was awfully hard on poor Steve, but don't worry-some nice recovery chapters are up next. His people are going to take care of him._

_Happy New Year, everybody! Hope your year is off to a good start!_

_Oh, and if you're having a hard time picturing blond Bucky, google 'blond Sebastian Stan', which I did to get a visual for this. It's different. I mean, the man looks good in anything, but there's a weird alternate universe kind of feel to it._


	60. Repairing The Damage

_Alright, Steve is safe and sound, and now it's time for a bit of a break and some fluff and recovery.  
_

* * *

Bucky hated sleeping in the infirmary—the beds were a lot less comfortable than the ones in the dorm, and they almost felt too short. But this was where Steve was, and Steve didn't need to be alone right now.

They'd landed fairly smoothly back in the infirmary, although Steve would have fallen out of the chair if Bucky hadn't been holding onto his shoulder. Nurse Rains had been waiting for them, and she'd set to examining Steve at once. Bucky had had the thought before, but it occurred to him anew that there was no way Rains could be the Hydra spy. Never mind the fact that if she was, she had failed spectacularly at several opportunities to kill the team and make it look like an accident. Watching her with Steve, remembering the times she'd treated him and the others, Bucky knew it was impossible. The deft, gentle way her hands moved, the soothing string of Welsh assurances she muttered, and the absolute fury burning behind the motherly concern in her eyes when any student in her charge came in hurt—she cared too much. No Hydra spy could be _that_ good an actor.

She'd gotten Steve out of the chair and into a bed—an impressive feat considering he had thirteen inches and at least a hundred pounds on her—and once he was lying comfortably, she had started muttering little healing spells over him as he fell asleep. Jim had been right—she _was_ fast. Bucky had been able to see the bruises and cuts fading and vanishing, the burns knitting back together, leaving his skin smooth and healthy again.

"There we are, then," Rains had said when she was done, pulling a blanket up over him and patting his hair. "Rest now, love." She turned to face the rest of them. "Right, time for you three."

"We're fine," Bucky had said. "What about—"

"That's for me to decide, Mr. Barnes," she'd told him, waving at him to sit down. "Cooperate and I'll give you the full report," she'd added with a knowing smile.

Bucky had sat and allowed her to run her diagnostic spells, and she had kept her word and told him and Jim and Peggy what she'd found as she checked them over. Steve's injuries had been extensive, but they were uncomplicated and easy enough to heal. Whatever they'd been drugging him with—Bucky and Jim had been right, it was a sedative—was incredibly powerful and there was a lot of it. It was going to take nearly a week to work itself out of his system completely, but it would do so with no lasting effects. That had been a relief to hear, although Bucky had felt a renewed sense of angry magic vibrating under his skin when Rains had mentioned that this sedative seemed to have been custom-designed to affect the super-soldier serum—they'd made it just for Steve.

Right now, though, everything was calm. Dugan and Monty had showed up not long after the rest of them and been reassured that Steve was alright. Rains had sent them all off to get some rest then, with the exception of Bucky, who she'd told that he could stay in the infirmary over night as long he spent some of the time sleeping. And he'd been asleep, at least until Steve had started tossing and making little distressed noises in his sleep. Bucky went and sat on the side of Steve's bed then, brushing his hand back through his hair, and that seemed to quiet him. Bucky wondered what he was dreaming about—if the drugs were messing with his head, or if Zwart had done something awful to him that he was reliving in his sleep. He hoped it was the first one.

Bucky fell back asleep around dawn, waking up just before noon with the triumphant return of Jacques and Gabe. Both were unharmed, and Jacques had found some blood samples of Steve's that he'd destroyed, but nothing else that seemed compromising. He did bring back armfuls of non-Steve related paperwork for Peggy and Howard to pore over, and he cackled happily as he told Bucky that he'd left behind several booby-trap spells and a few explosives, and had let the furry little multi-headed hell-beast out of its room before sealing the window back up when he left.

Steve woke up later in the afternoon, and though he couldn't stay awake long and kept drifting in and out, he seemed aware most of the time and unhurt—just an exhausted version of his usual self. It took several times of waking and falling asleep again before he was able to get all his questions about the mission answered and be assured that the rest of the team was fine and no one was hurt.

Phillips did come in to talk to him after dinner, and while he was trying to figure out if Steve had unwittingly given anything away he shouldn't have, he was obviously trying to be gentle about it, which Bucky found both touching and amusing. Touching, because it showed that Phillips cared, and amusing because he wasn't very good at it.

"What did they want from you, Rogers?" he asked.

"Whatever they could get, Sir," Steve replied. "They took a lot of blood, but…" He turned to Bucky. "You said Jacques took care of that, right?"

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. It's all good."

"Otherwise," Steve shrugged. "Whatever they could get on the S.S.R. They knew I knew a lot."

"And what did you tell them?" Phillips asked gruffly. He checked himself. "I know there were…extenuating circumstances. I'm not accusing you of anything, I just want to know what we should be looking out for." He took a breath and tried again in a softer voice. "What did they do?"

Steve smiled a little. "They tried a lot of things to get me to talk. They hit me a lot. That didn't work."

Phillips snorted at that, and Bucky supposed, aside from the part where people were hitting Steve, it _was_ kind of funny. Anyone who knew him at all knew all that would do was make him more obstinate.

"And they tried using Veritaserum, but I don't…I don't think it works on me," Steve continued.

"It doesn't," Phillips confirmed. "Erskine didn't mention that?"

"No, Sir," Steve replied. "It didn't make me tell them anything, but it did make me throw up a lot." He sighed. "They kept trying different potions and things, and it…" He rubbed his forehead with a shaky hand. "It all kind of blends together, but I either passed out or got sick. They did find something, though. I don't know what it was, I think Zwart made it himself."

Bucky felt nervous knots twisting in his stomach as Steve paused to yawn. What had they done? What had they made him do?

Both he and Phillips were leaning in tensely when Steve started speaking again. "It made me feel really weird. Everything went all…twirly. Then he started asking me stuff and I couldn't…I just, I just _had_ to talk. And I wanted to answer his question, I really did, but I knew I wasn't s'posed to do that, so before I could start, I just started talking about the first thing that came into my head. And once I got going, I couldn't stop."

Phillips and Bucky looked at each other and then back at Steve. "And what was the first thing that came into your head?" Phillips asked.

"Um," Steve blushed a little. "How to knit."

Phillips blinked. "How to knit?" he repeated, like he wasn't sure he'd heard him right.

"Yessir," Steve replied. "I was just, I was thinking how I wished I was at home instead of in that chair, and I remembered that at Christmas, which was the last time I was at home, Bucky showed me how, so I started telling Zwart how to hold the needles and stuff and what the different holds are, an' I walked him through how to make a scarf, an' he didn't want to hear about that, so he hit me, but whatever the potion was, it was too strong an' I couldn't stop, so I finished telling him how to make a scarf. Then I talked about salamanders for a while, 'cause we learned about those in Fourth Year, an' I remember 'em real good for some reason, an' when I was done with the salamanders I told him about Dadaism and the Bauhaus, an' I thought maybe he would like that 'cause he's German, but he didn't, an' he got mad an' left."

Steve was starting to slur his words, and Bucky didn't think he had a lot of consciousness left in him, but he was grinning as he listened to Steve ramble. It was pretty fantastic.

"So, you…" Phillips cut in to clarify when Steve stopped for a breath. "You talked to him about knitting, salamanders, and art?"

"Uh huh," Steve said, and he must really be tired if he forgot the 'Sir'. "He left, but he told vulture-guy to stay 'case I said anything important."

"Vulture-guy?" Phillips asked.

"Zwart's valet, Sir," Bucky clarified.

"Mm-hmm," Steve confirmed. "I still couldn't stop, though. He said it took me six hours to stop. An' he was _pissed _about it. I told him about my favorite kind of pie, an' the diff'rent kinds of wrenches you can use to work on a car, an' what you should do if someone's having an asthma attack, an' how to build a motorcycle from the wheels up, an' the plot of _The Hobbit_. I didn' do the Gollum voice, though."

Bucky barked out a surprised laugh at that, and Phillips gave him a strange look before returning his eyes to Steve. "So, let me get this straight. You rambled for six hours about absolutely nothing?"

"Yessir."

"And that's all you told them?"

"Yessir."

He huffed a disbelieving laugh and shook his head. "Alright, then." He stood up, took a step, turned back to the bed. "Get well soon, son," he said, patting him awkwardly on the arm. Then he left.

"You really did all that?" Bucky asked, smiling.

"Uh huh," Steve replied sleepily. "D' I do good?" Steve asked, losing half the sentence in a yawn.

"You did great," Bucky confirmed.

"I tried," Steve said. "Knew it was 'portant."

"Yeah, it was," Bucky agreed. "And you did great," he said again. With as drugged up as Steve had been, no one would have blamed him for spilling something. But he hadn't. Bucky's grin softened and he brushed his fingers back through Steve's hair as his eyes started to close. "That's my boy."

Steve smiled and let his eyes close all the way. "Thanks," he whispered. There was a long pause, and then, "y'r hair still looks r'diculous, by th' way."

Bucky laughed and swatted Steve softly on the shoulder. "Go to sleep, punk."

The next morning, after Steve complained about his hair again, Bucky went downstairs to see if he could get Peggy to help him fix it. If Steve was giving him this much grief about it, he could only imagine what Becky would do.

He found her down in her office, half-buried behind the pile of stuff Jacques had brought back from Zwart's house. It took her a couple of tries, but she managed to find the right spell to fix his hair. He inspected his reflection in the window, pleased to see it back to its original dark brown.

"Thanks," he told her, smoothing it back down.

"You're welcome," she replied, returning to her pile.

"Hey," he continued. "Have you been up to see Steve lately?" Bucky had been up there almost the whole time since they'd gotten back, and he hadn't seen her.

He could only see part of her face over the stacks of papers she was behind, but he thought she was blushing. "No," she replied. "Jim and Dugan have been keeping me up to date, though."

Well, that was nice she was checking on his progress, but something was definitely off. "Why haven't you been up there?" he asked.

"I…I've got a lot to do before I go home tomorrow," she said, gesturing at her desk. "And Steve's been asleep nearly the whole time anyway," she added.

Bucky leaned back against her desk and crossed his arms. "Uh huh," he said. He didn't buy that for a second. "Are you the same girl who pulled off being Elsa von Weir two days ago? Because, I gotta tell you, you're a worse liar than Steve is."

She didn't say anything and Bucky sighed. "Look, whatever it is, just go see him, alright? He thinks you're avoiding him."

"I am avoiding him," Peggy replied quietly.

Bucky nodded. He hadn't wanted to say it to Steve, but he'd thought so too. And he thought he knew why.

"It's my fault he's up there," Peggy continued softly.

Yep, there it was. "No, it isn't," Bucky replied.

"Yes, it is."

"How d'you figure?"

"Because…" She sighed and threw a hand out toward her desk. "He got caught and he got hurt because _I_ sent you to Salzburg. For nothing. There wasn't a mission—there was never a mission—and I didn't see it. You all could have gotten killed, and everything that happened to him happened because of me—"

"Whoa, Peggy, hey," Bucky said. "What happened to Steve happened because of Zwart. Zwart and this freaking spy, who we are gonna find and nail to the wall. Not you."

"Yes, it was because of me," she insisted. "You don't understand, the entire thing was a setup, and I missed it. All the intelligence, all the reports…I work in military intelligence—it's only my bloody job!"

Her voice was getting very high and tight and her lips were starting to quiver, so, carefully, Bucky took a step forward and opened his arms in invitation, and her face twisted up into a grimace and she stepped forward into the hug. "It's not your fault, Pegs," he told her. "You were doing the best you could with what you had. And if I know one thing, it had to be a hell of a forgery to get past you. And it didn't just get past you. It got past whoever else okayed this mission and whoever else passed the intel on to you in the first place. This spy we're after is good. They'd have to be to survive in the S.S.R. this long. But we're gonna get 'em. And all of this is on them, and the only one blaming you for it is you." He kissed the top of her head gently and ran a hand down over her hair, like he would with Becky. "Don't let 'em get to you like this."

She was quiet for a minute, then she nodded against his chest.

"And, hey, if you don't believe me, ask Steve," he told her, pulling back and smiling at her. "We both know he's a terrible liar."

She laughed a little at that and wiped at the corner of her eyes, though they were both still dry.

"So, will you go see him?" Bucky asked. "He misses you."

"Yeah," she nodded. "I miss him too."

Bucky waited while she locked her stuff up, then walked her back upstairs to the infirmary. Steve was asleep when they got there, so, after Bucky checked to make sure everything was still alright, he left, leaving Peggy to stay with him. He still didn't like leaving Steve alone while he was sick, but he and Peggy were going to have some things to talk about when he woke up and they didn't need an audience for that. Besides, they would be going home soon, so he should probably pack up some stuff.

He glanced over his shoulder as he reached the door. Peggy was sitting on the mattress next to Steve, leaning back against the headboard and carding her fingers gently through his hair. Bucky smiled. They just fit so well together. And they were going to be okay.

* * *

Winnifred Barnes was folding the laundry when a large silver bear appeared in the living room in front of her and made her yelp in surprise and drop George's shirts.

"Hey, ma," the bear said in Bucky's voice. "Um, I hope I'm doing this right, I've never talked through a Patronus before. Anyway, the nurse said Steve is good to go home now." Bucky had sent her a letter two days ago letting her know that he'd found Steve and they were both safe, but Steve needed a little more time in the infirmary. "He's still gonna be real tired," the bear continued. "But she said all he needs is sleep now, and he can do that at home. They're making us a Portkey and we should be coming home at 3:00. As far as I can tell, they're gonna drop us in the living room. See you then. Love you."

The bear vanished and Winnifred looked at the clock in the corner. They would be home in about an hour. She called Rebecca and they finished folding the laundry and made sure the beds were made up in the boys' room. She used the extra time to start getting things ready for dinner—they'd be eating a lot more with the two of them home.

Rebecca had grumbled at being sent down to George's shop to give him the message—she hadn't wanted to miss their arrival, but she made it back before they did. The air in the living room seemed to twist in the middle, and then there they were, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Bucky staggered sideways under Steve's weight, and Winnifred rushed forward to help him, getting under Steve's unsupported shoulder.

"Hi, Ma," Bucky greeted. "Thanks." He readjusted his grip on Steve. "I got him now."

"Don't be silly, dear, I'm already here. Let me help you get him to your room." Steve didn't look sick, for which she was grateful, but he was swaying lethargically and didn't seem able to keep his feet.

"Hey, Mrs. Barnes," Steve said with a sleepy smile. " 's good t' see you."

"It's good to see you too, dear. We've been so worried about you. I'm so glad you're home."

They got him into the bedroom—Becky pulled down the covers for them—and lowered Steve down into bed. He was already (or 'still' might be the better word) in his pajamas. "Gimme a minute an' I'll…I'll be okay," Steve said.

"Give you a minute and you'll be asleep," Bucky said, slipping his arms out from the straps of the two backpacks he was wearing and dropping them to the floor.

"Nyuh uh," Steve retorted, even as his eyes slipped shut.

"Shut up and go to sleep, punk," Bucky replied, reaching down to ruffle his hair. Steve grunted in response.

"It's alright, Steve, get some rest." Winnifred leaned down and kissed his forehead, then brushed his hair back and adjusted the blanket. He hummed a little bit and then was quiet.

Turning around, she threw her arms around Bucky. "Welcome home, sweetheart," she said, kissing him on the cheek.

"Thanks, Ma," he said, hugging her back warmly. "I missed you."

"What about me?" Rebecca asked, worming her way into the middle of the hug.

"Nah," Bucky scoffed. "I saw you five days ago." Rebecca stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed, taking one arm off of Winnifred and looping it around his sister. " 'course I missed you, Munchkin," she heard him whisper.

So as not to bother Steve, they moved the reunion into the kitchen. Winnifred poured them all a cup of tea, and Bucky caught them up on the events of the past five days. Rebecca was fascinated with his recounting of the espionage part of the rescue mission with Peggy, asking for as many details as he was willing to give. It _was_ fascinating, Winnifred had to admit, and they'd come out of it alive, so she chose not to dwell on how dangerous it had been. She did note that while Bucky was happy to grant Rebecca's request as far as describing the mansion or how he and Peggy had acted as though they belonged, details about finding Steve were very scant. The poor boy must have been in dreadful shape, which Rebecca did not need to hear about and Bucky did not want to think about. Winnifred sighed to herself. Just because they'd come out of it alive, it didn't make it any easier to watch her children suffer. Surely the war would be over some day.

Though Steve was hungry, he was rather grumpy about being woken up to eat dinner, and Winnifred had to smile at that. She'd seen plenty of sick Steve in her time—up close and personal for the two years he'd lived with them before getting big and healthy, and countless times before that as well. It was always funny to her how cranky it made him, given how very polite he was the rest of the time.

Not long after dinner, Bucky went to bed. He was tired—as well he should be after running around on dangerous missions and staying up late worrying after Steve. Two peas in a pod, those two, one always worrying after the other. All the times Steve had been sick when he was little, and Steve fretting over Bucky after Italy…A smile sprang to Winnifred's face as she remembered, oh, it must have been at least ten years ago now…Steve had broken his ankle—one of the bigger boys at school had pushed him down some stairs. Bucky had been over at the Rogers' apartment nearly every daylight hour, looking after Steve and keeping him company. Then Bucky had come down with the chicken pox. Steve had somehow managed to sneak away from Mrs. O'Brien while his mother was at work, drag himself and his broken ankle across the street and up three flights of stairs and into Bucky's room without being caught, then spent the day keeping Bucky from scratching and getting him water and food. It was sweet, really. Occasionally frustrating. But sweet.

Steve spent all of the next day in bed, though he was awake from time to time and seemed reasonably aware for most of that. When he was awake, Bucky was in there talking to him, and when he was asleep, Bucky wasn't far away. Bucky did protest a little bit at being asked to go out and pick up the groceries, but Winnifred assured him Steve was in good hands.

"I've looked after sick boys before, you know," she told him.

"I know, I didn't mean…" he mumbled, cheeks turning pink.

She kissed his cheek. "He'll be fine." She waved him towards the door. "The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back."

Bucky nodded and left, and Winnifred kept her word, checking in on Steve as she passed to and fro. He slept on, and she tried not to think about whatever it was in his blood that was making him so tired. The war could be so cruel, and her boys, for all their heroics, were still just children.

A little bit later in the kitchen, she heard the soft whimper of distressed sleep. Drying her hands, she hurried down the hall and stopped in the bedroom doorway, surprised but touched by what she saw there. Steve was asleep, shifting uneasily, his breath coming in sharp hitches as something unpleasant visited his dreams. And sitting on the side of his mattress with her feet tucked up under her was Rebecca, stroking his hair and whispering soft reassurances.

"Sh, Steve, it's okay," she soothed, her voice low and gentle. "It's all okay now." She started humming something, her fingers continuing their soothing motion through his hair. Then she started to sing, and it took Winnifred a moment—she'd heard it so infrequently before and only ever from Sarah—to realize that her little girl was singing in Gaelic.

"Gille beag ò, gille lag ò, gille beag ò nan caorach," Rebecca sang softly. "Gille beag ò, gille lag ò, gille beag ò nan caorach." Steve was starting to breathe more easily, slowing in his agitated movement. "Gille nan caorachan, gille nan caorachan, gille nan caorachan, gaolach thu," Rebecca finished, and Steve was still and calm again. She looked up and saw Winnifred watching, then smiled a little self-consciously and slid off the bed. She pressed a soft kiss to Steve's forehead before tip-toeing out on bare feet.

"That was very sweet, dear," Winnifred said, sliding an arm over her daughter's shoulders. She cast a backwards glance to where Steve was sleeping peacefully once more. "What was that you were singing?"

"Steve would sing me and Esther that song during the air raids," she said. "Back when he was still little, and Jay was off doing other Army stuff. The first one came and we were scared, and Steve found us and held on to us and told us we'd be okay. He sang that song—real quiet, so the bombs wouldn't find us, but he sang it then and he'd sing it when other air raids happened." She smiled a little. "The air raids usually happen when him and Jay are gone now, and they're not as scary as they used to be, but me and Esther will still sing it together while we're sitting in the dark."

She drew in a deep breath. "Then when all that bad stuff happened to Jay and he was in the hospital for a while, there was one time…It was before you got there, but Jay was having a real bad time and Steve sang that song for him and it calmed him down." She smiled sadly. "He told me later his ma would sing him that song when he was sick. I thought it might make him feel better now if he could hear it."

Winnifred blinked back the sudden tears pooling in her eyes and leaned down and kissed Rebecca. "I think you were right," she told her. "I'm so glad you could do that for him." And what a sweet honor to Sarah's memory, that her song could still comfort her son these years later.

* * *

Steve was feeling well enough to get out of bed, though it still took an awful lot of effort to get around the house. He could manage a trip from the bedroom to the living room if he leaned heavily on the walls and furniture on the way there, but the change of scenery was nice, and it made him feel less like he was sick, even if staying awake once he hit the couch proved difficult.

He recalled a couple of times he'd felt this tired before when he was sick—pneumonia had always gotten him down like this, and that one time when he'd had scarlet fever. It was annoying and frustrating and kind of embarrassing—he hated how heavy and fuzzy and slow he felt—but it was at least comforting to know that this wasn't because he was sick, and it would pass soon.

Bucky didn't give him any grief for falling asleep mid-conversation, and Becky didn't either until he was moving around the house under his own steam again. She'd tease him then, and he didn't really mind. Usually.

He'd fallen asleep on the couch again, and arguing voices and something pinching his ear drew him out of sleep. Bucky was telling Becky that she shouldn't do something, and Becky was protesting that it wasn't hurting anything, and Steve turned his head to see what they were fussing about and opened his eyes, then shut them again as several small, wooden things fell and hit him in the face. Becky giggled.

"What was that?" he asked, brushing at his face and opening his eyes again when nothing else seemed ready to hit him.

"_Someone_," Bucky said, reaching for Steve's head. "Thought it would be funny to build a tower out of clothespins on your face while you were asleep." He unclipped the clothespin that had been attached to Steve's ear, holding it up to demonstrate.

"It was pretty tall too," Becky said proudly. "Almost a foot. Which I think was pretty good, especially since they were mostly just balancing and only one of 'em was clipped onto you. I didn't wanna pinch you too much."

"How very thoughtful," Steve said, sitting up.

"It was pretty tricky," she explained. "Next time, I'll clip it on your collar or something."

"How about next time, you don't stack clothespins on my face?" Steve suggested.

"Okay," she replied with a smile that told him he might should be on the lookout for something else stacked on his face instead.

Later that evening—he had managed to stay awake since dinner and was very proud of that—he was getting ready for bed. Bucky was sitting over on his bed watching him, looking like he was ready to spring into action if he lost his balance getting into his pajamas. Steve snorted to himself. Yeah, _Steve_ was the one who hovered too much.

"So, you were telling me about you and Peggy looking for me in Zwart's house?" he prompted, having successfully gotten most of his pajamas on and sitting down on his mattress. (He did have to sit so he could look down and get the buttons on his shirt without falling over.) Bucky had been telling him over the course of the past couple of days about what had happened since Steve had disappeared in Salzburg—usually when they were alone, to spare Becky and his ma the nastier—or more classified—details.

Bucky continued with his tale of espionage, and it was quite a story. It sounded like something out of a movie, secret agents infiltrating a Nazi wizard's house during a party. Bucky seemed to enjoy telling the story, though when he got to the part about them breaking away and actually looking for Steve, he seemed a little unsure of where to go with it.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked.

Bucky sighed, and didn't say anything for a minute. "Okay," he said. "You know how I told you me and Peggy had to act like we were a couple to blend in to the party?"

Steve nodded. Zwart's potion was affecting his body, not his brain—if he was awake enough to absorb something he was told, he didn't have trouble remembering it.

"Okay, so, I don't know, maybe Peggy already told you this," Bucky said. "And I don't want…I don't want you to think I was trying to hide anything from you or anything, but I wanted to make sure you were awake and well and everything before we talked about it."

"Talked about what?"

"I kissed Peggy."

"Well, you were acting like a couple—"

"No," Bucky interrupted. "Like, I _kissed_ her. A lot. The valet guy came in while we were in the study, and that was the only thing I could think to do to explain why we'd snuck so far away from the party. I—" He shrugged, not sure of what else to say.

Steve took a second to take that in. He'd known that, Peggy had told him, and he understood why. He didn't _like_ it, sure, but, well, it was alright. It had saved their lives, and it hadn't meant anything. Steve knew that Peggy loved him, and he knew Bucky had no intention of trying to steal her away from him, and right now Bucky was sitting on the other bed looking like he was waiting for Steve to get up and punch him, and Steve smiled.

"It's alright, Buck," he said. "I'm not mad."

"You're not?"

Steve shook his head. "I mean, do I like the mental image of you making out with my girlfriend? Hell, no." Bucky grimaced, but Steve smiled at him. "But I'm not mad. It kept the two of you from getting killed, and, you know, I like you guys, so I'm glad." That got a huff of laughter from Bucky. "And it led to you saving my life, which, again, I'm fond of, so…" He shrugged and Bucky smiled.

"It's really okay, Buck," he assured him. He wasn't going to dwell on that image of the two of them together, and, yeah, it really was okay. "Thanks for telling me," he said. It would have been easy for Bucky to have just never said anything, but Steve appreciated the honesty.

Bucky nodded. "So, um, yeah," he said after a minute. "Then we found you. I'm guessing you remember that part?"

"Kinda," Steve allowed. "It's fuzzy." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Peggy stabbed a guy, didn't she?"

"Oh, yeah," Bucky said with a grin. "Among other things. I don't think she likes people hurting you any more than I do."

Steve chuckled at that.

"So, what happened?" Bucky asked. He made no attempt to hide his concern, and Steve knew he'd only waited this long to ask to make sure Steve was awake and well enough to tell him, and it had clearly been killing him.

Steve drew in a deep breath. This was the sucky part, talking it out. But he knew from experience he'd feel better when he was done. "I went down," he said. "There were too many of 'em. Then somebody hit me with a spell from too close for the suit to stop. It got real fuzzy after that. They got my helmet off sometime afterwards and hit me pretty good. I don't actually remember getting to Zwart's house."

He'd woken up with a pounding head, and it had taken him a minute to realize he was cuffed to a chair and that his uniform was gone. He'd felt uncomfortably exposed, sitting there in his shorts in the dark, no wand and no idea where he was. He'd been worried about his team. They clearly weren't there, but that didn't mean they were alright. He'd known it was a setup, but he hadn't known until Bucky and Peggy got him out that they'd only wanted him.

Zwart and the valet had come in, demanding information about the S.S.R.—players and locations and ops. Steve reckoned it must have been stuff the spy—who'd clearly arranged this whole thing—did not have access to. They'd taken blood too, a lot of it, in their ongoing attempt to recreate Erskine's formula. Steve had been worried about that, but was unable to do anything to stop it. They'd questioned him and hurt him when he hadn't complied, and Steve remembered fighting his way out of the chair at one point, and he was pretty sure he'd broken Zwart's nose before they got him with a Stunning spell. But that was when the drugs started.

They'd gotten a stronger chair, and they'd started off with potions and curses to see if that would make him talk. The Veritaserum, to their surprise and Steve's, had not worked, but he'd gotten spectacularly sick. They tried other potions, other curses, including the ImperiousCurse at one point, and he'd fought back or gotten sick again or blacked out or all three. He was feeling weak and shaky from the lack of food, lethargic from the loss of blood, and sick from all the potions, but he still fought as hard as he could. So, when they weren't questioning him, they'd stick that needle in his neck and set up that evil little clicking thing on the table, and he wouldn't be able to move or think.

"It was awful," he said softly, remembering. "There would be a moment, right as it all kicked in, where I could feel myself slipping away, and no matter how I tried, I couldn't get back." Bucky was on his bed now, an arm around Steve's shoulders, and Steve hadn't noticed when he got there, but he leaned his head down against Bucky's shoulder. "And it would all still be in me when they'd come to talk to me again—they never let it clear all the way out, and I was so scared I was going to break, to say something without meaning to. And it—" He swallowed hard, ashamed. "Whatever it was they were putting in me, it made everything hurt more, and I got more scared of them. 'Cause they kept hurting me and it hurt worse, and it was getting harder to fight them."

Bucky leaned his head against Steve's and looped an arm around him, his hand reaching up to rest in Steve's hair. "I'm sorry, Stevie," he said softly. "I'm so sorry." His voice was simultaneously filled with deep compassion—because he'd been where Steve had been—and the rolling fury that Steve used to hear all the time when he was little and Bucky found out people had been hurting him.

"You know what kept me going, though?" Steve asked.

"What?"

"I knew you were coming," he replied quietly. He hadn't needed to be saved—not like that—for a long time, but he'd known that he would be. And when he'd been scared and afraid he would break, he'd hung on to that. "Because I was in trouble, and I knew, wherever you were, you were gonna come get me out of it."

Bucky didn't say anything for a minute, and his voice was rough when he spoke. "I'll always find you, Stevie," he said at last.

"I know," Steve said. He might be the leader now, the big, strong Captain everyone looked to, but Bucky was the protector, the big brother even though he was only four months older than him, and he always would be. He was still Steve's rock, and that was never going to change.

"I'm sorry it took me so long," Bucky said softly.

"But you found me," Steve replied. That was all that mattered. Steve would always be able to hang on until Bucky got there. "That's the important part."

Bucky smiled and hugged him, and Steve felt really okay for the first time since coming home. Exhausted, sure. But okay. He was gonna be fine.

"How about," Bucky said, a teasing tone in his voice now as he sat up away from Steve. "You just quit getting yourself in trouble? It would make my job easier."

"Yeah, well, then you'd be bored," Steve countered with a grin, leaning back onto his pillows and shutting his eyes. He could feel sleep rolling forward from the back of his brain, and he figured he only had a minute or two.

Bucky cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, and Steve felt the mattress shift as Bucky got up and went back to his bed. "I'm sure I could find something else to do," Bucky replied. "There _is_ a war on, after all."

Steve chuckled. "You can multitask. You're good."

"I am good," Bucky agreed. Steve heard the click of the lamp going off. "Goodnight, punk."

"Night, jerk," Steve replied happily.

* * *

_Steve's gonna be okay, and he has a good family to look after him. A little more rest and recovery, and, of course, Bucky's 17th birthday, coming up before we get back to the action. See you Friday! I'd love to hear what you think so far!_


	61. Contemplations And Celebrations

_Steve is on the mend, Bucky's feeling contemplative, and it's time for a big 17th birthday party!  
_

* * *

Over the next couple of days, Steve started getting better much faster, and by the end of their first week at home, he'd stopped falling asleep unexpectedly all over the place. Things felt normal again, and it was good to see him get his old energy back. This wasn't the first time Bucky had almost lost him—it was far too frequent an occurrence, really, what with the dangerous lives they led, but it never got any easier.

Now, though, things were good. It was a nice, warm spring, they were home, they were all healthy, and life felt good. Bucky was in the kitchen helping his ma peel potatoes for dinner, and Steve and Becky were in the living room folding laundry. Well, they were supposed to be folding laundry. Bucky suspected what was really happening was that they were folding the odd shirt or two while trying to see how many clothespins they could clip onto the other person before they noticed, like they'd been doing for several days now. So far, Becky was leading the challenge with eight, although to be fair, she did have a much larger area to work with than Steve did.

"Something on your mind, Bucky?" his ma asked from where she was standing over by the stove.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up.

His ma smiled. "You've nearly run out of potato there," she said with a nod at his hands. He looked down and noticed that she was right—he'd peeled all the skin from his potato and just kept going, and he was only a few slivers of potato away from peeling his hand.

"Oh," he said, setting down what remained of the potato. "Sorry." He scooped up the pieces of potato and separated them out from the pile of skins.

"It's alright, they're just going to be mashed up anyway," his ma said. She turned down the burner and sat next to him, placing a glass of iced tea in front of each of them. "What seems to be the trouble?"

Bucky shrugged and took a sip of tea. "No trouble, really," he said. "I was just thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I was thinking about what happened with Steve. And just…" He chewed on his lower lip, considering. "It just, well, it scares me when stuff like that happens to him."

His ma nodded. "I know," she agreed. Her small smile told him she understood completely. "It scares me too."

"And not just Steve," he went on. "But, like…I told you what happened with Peggy, right?" She nodded again. He and Steve didn't tell her everything about their missions, but they'd told her about France, and Peggy getting hurt. "And then the thing after that with the…"

"With the tuberculosis," his ma finished for him.

"Yeah," he said quietly. Any mention of that invariably brought his mind back around to Mrs. Rogers, but he pushed on. "And all kinds of other missions too. I don't think anyone on the team's ever not gotten hurt real bad at some point. And I just…" He sighed. "I'm tired of seeing people I care about get hurt. I just worry that one day it'll…"

His ma smiled sadly at him and reached over and squeezed his hand.

"And I'm tired…" He really wasn't sure how to say this next part without sounding like some kind of coward, but… "I'm tired of fighting, Ma," he said. "I know it's good, why we're doing it. And I'm not saying I want to back out while there's work to do or anything, I just…"

His ma nodded, understanding. "I know. And you know how proud I am of you for being so brave and doing all this. But I hope you know that I would not think one little bit less of you if you stopped. You know that, don't you?"

He looked up and met her eyes and smiled softly. "I do, Ma," he said. He really did. And that meant a lot to him, but that wasn't why he couldn't stop. "But I don't think I can. Not with Steve still in the fight. Not with Peggy and Jim and Gabe and the rest of them all in it. I've got people counting on me."

His ma looked a little bit like she was going to cry, but she was smiling at him. "I know that too," she said. She reached over and put a hand around the back of his head, pulling him forward and kissing his forehead. "I'm so sorry this is a choice you have to make at all, baby," she whispered, then kissed him one more time and pulled back.

A sudden knot formed in his throat, and he swallowed hard. He knew he was a legal wizard and an adult now and everything, but right now all he wanted was for his mother to reassure him that everything was going to be okay. "The war has to be over someday, right?" he asked, a very much younger-than-seventeen-years-old waver in his voice.

She got up out of her chair and came over and hugged him, leaning over him and wrapping him up in her arms. "Yes, it will," she said firmly. "You aren't going to have to fight forever, sweetheart. None of you will."

He just sat there for a minute and let her hold him. Calm flowed over him, and he smiled his gratitude up at her when she pulled back and sat down again. "I think I'd like to come home," he said. "If it's over when I'm done with school, I think I'd like to come home to New York." He took a long drink of the tea he'd forgotten was sitting in front of him.

"What would you like to do?" his mother asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I might go to college. Or maybe something, I don't know, Howard Stark has a place in the city, and some of his magic and technology blending is really something. I could work there, or…I don't know." There were a lot of possibilities. "It would be nice to live near you guys for a while, to be some place familiar." He inclined his head thoughtfully. "Steve's talked some about going to art school. Maybe me and him could get an apartment or something. Though one of us would have to learn how to cook," he added. He didn't think campfire cooking would get you very far in the city.

His ma laughed at that. "Well, at least you know how to do your own laundry, which can't be said of all young men your age. As for cooking…" She stood up, taking his elbow and pulling him up with her. "Why don't we start with mashed potatoes?"

Bucky knew how to peel and chop them, but his ma had always taken over the potatoes from there, so he watched and helped her boil water and add butter and milk and salt. Seemed easy enough. "Well," he said, as they finished that. "So we can at least eat mashed potatoes once we're on our own."

His ma laughed again. "Tomorrow we'll do bread. How's that sound?"

Becky and Steve came in to help then, and Steve seemed to have won that clothespin round, seeing as there was still one clipped to the middle of Becky's braid that she seemed to have failed to notice. It didn't catch her attention until much later when she was getting ready for bed. She then yelped in displeasure, marched into their room and threw her slipper at Steve.

Bucky did help his ma with cooking for the rest of the break, and when Steve heard what they were doing, he wanted to learn too. They'd always helped with pieces of meals when they were home, but always under instruction, and they'd never done a whole meal on their own. Turned out cooking, if you could read a recipe, wasn't that hard. Bucky's ma soon had them preparing entire meals, and declared that she should have done this ages ago.

Of course, the big event of the Easter Break, which Bucky had almost forgotten about after Salzburg, was his coming of age party. That was one meal his ma didn't have him help with—you weren't supposed to make your own birthday meal, she said. She made all his favorites, including a chocolate pie. The Kowalskis came, and Mrs. O'Brien, and it felt like there was almost as much food as when they got together at Christmas. Becky and the Kowalski triplets started the festivities by singing the loudest, most off-key rendition of 'Happy Birthday to You' that Bucky had ever heard in his life.

Everyone laughed and talked happily, and Mrs. Kowalski asked Bucky if he'd been doing any celebratory magic since he was allowed to do it without supervision now. Bucky had actually forgotten about that—again, a lot had been going on since he actually turned seventeen—but he enjoyed listening as all the adults shared stories of the first spells they remembered doing when they'd come of age. Mrs. Kowalski had woken up and levitated her furniture around her room to rearrange it. Mr. Kowalski had apparated all over the house. His ma had tried summoning everything she needed that day instead of actually picking anything up, and his pop had given himself a haircut (and then had to fix it). Mrs. O'Brien surprised them all by saying that her first spell upon turning seventeen had been transfiguring her brother into a rabbit and tossing him out in the garden for the afternoon.

After dinner came the gifts. His parents got him the traditional wizard's gift of a watch. It was beautiful, the bronze casing polished to an almost mirror-like shine, and Bucky felt very solemn upon receiving it, feeling the weight of it in his hand and the soft tick of the mechanism vibrating against his palm. 'E. Barnes' was engraved in an elegant script on the back.

"Edward Barnes," his pop said. "This was my father's watch."

Bucky looked back down at the watch and ran a finger reverently around the smooth rim. "Thanks," he said quietly, a waver of emotion in his voice.

From the Kowalskis, there was a collapsible brass telescope that, when looking at the night sky, labelled the planets and mapped out their movements, as well as those of the major stars—Copernicus and his plotting of the solar system was Polish, after all, as Mr. Kowalski pointed out a couple of times.

From Mrs. O'Brien, there was a leather satchel, very much like the one Bucky took on missions, but this one was magically expanded to be bigger on the inside, and she had sewn in a lining of magically woven cloth that would keep the contents from getting wet if the bag ended up in water.

Steve gave him a combat knife with a protective sheath and a blade that would never dull or break. The handle was solid, wrapped in black leather, and felt good in his hand. The blade shone in the light and reflected his eyes back at him as he examined it. He wondered, given that Steve had still been recovering when he got home, when he had gotten the knife, but Steve just smiled and told him to quit trying to take the mystery out of his present.

The last gift was from Becky. It was a little box, not much bigger than a matchbox, and it appeared to be made of glass, though she assured him it wouldn't break. The box looked empty, but it contained an active _Lumos_ charm—squeezing the box turned the light on, and flicking it turned it off.

"That's really neat," he told her after she explained how it worked. "I've never seen anything like this before."

Her cheeks went red, but she smiled. "That's 'cause I made it myself. I mean, Jim helped me put the spell inside, but…"

He smiled and looped an arm around her neck, tugging her forward and kissing her forehead. "That's awesome, Munchkin," he told her. "Thank you."

After the guests left, there was one more thing—a letter from the S.S.R., of all things. It had arrived a couple of days after his birthday, and his parents had been saving it for him. It declared that since he was now a legal adult wizard, his combat pay would be adjusted to reflect that, and he was officially given the rank of Sergeant. He stared at the three-chevron insignia that had been tucked up inside the folds of the parchment. 'Sarge' had been just a nickname before, did he really… His eyes flicked to the bottom of the official letter where there was a post-script in handwriting he recognized from hundreds of Defense Against The Dark Arts papers and sheets of homework. '_You've more than earned it. C. Phillips, Colonel_.' Bucky found himself having to swallow hard several times to force down the lump of emotion that rose up in his throat.

"Wow," Steve said when Bucky handed him the letter. Pride was swimming in the soft blue of his eyes when he looked back up at him. "Congratulations, Buck."

Bucky took the letter back and smiled. Tired of fighting or not, that Phillips actually did that was…wow. "Thanks," he replied.

The rest of the break passed quietly. Bucky did enjoy doing some magic around the house, just because he could, and his pop even took him down to the garage and showed him some spells that worked for fixing up the car. A couple of times, Bucky would apparate into whatever room Steve was in to try to make him jump—it only worked twice, but they were both pretty good. And he had finally, _finally_ made it to six feet tall. Still not as tall as Steve, because the little punk kept growing, but six feet was pretty good. He even had an inch on his pop now.

It hardly seemed like any time at all before they were heading back to school. Easter was the shortest of their three breaks anyway, and they'd lost a week of it coming in. It was an uneventful train ride in—long, as usual, and Bucky found himself wondering why, if they could apparate all over the continent for missions, now that he was seventeen why he couldn't just apparate to school and save the nine hours on the train. He knew long distances like that were harder, but not impossible. Erskine had brought them all the way to New York from the school gates three years ago. Nobody on the train seemed to know the answer to that. Steve and Gabe were the only ones who had no comment—they were the only Howling Commandos still underage at this point.

On the first day of classes, Bucky hurried off after breakfast when he spotted a familiar head of red hair leaving the Dining Hall. He had his first period free, and he knew Vicki did too. And in the thinking about the future he'd been doing over Break, he'd done a lot of thinking about her. He wanted to talk to her.

"Hey, Vicki!" he called.

She turned, saw him and smiled. "Hello, Bucky. How was your holiday?"

"Short," he replied, not really wanting to get into the rest of it right now. "Listen, do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Sure," she replied. "First period on the first day—I've not got any homework yet." She smiled at him, and that really was a great smile.

"I was thinking a lot over Break," he started. "And even last term, really." He thought that the realization that Vicki would be graduating and leaving soon had gotten his thoughts turning this way, but he knew too that watching Steve and Peggy together when he'd been laid up in the infirmary had stirred up that familiar ache in his chest. "Vicki, I miss you," he told her.

She arched a mischievous eyebrow. "Is that so? And Rose McTavish was, what…?"

"Same thing Colin Fraser was," he said with a grin, and she blushed a little and laughed.

"Touché," she replied with a smile.

"She was sweet and funny and I liked her, but she wasn't you," Bucky finished. "I miss you," he repeated, and she smiled softly. "I think we should give it another shot."

"Oh," she said, shaking her head. "No, Bucky, don't do this to me."

"Why not?" he asked, taking her hand. "You know how great we are together."

"Oh, I know, but…Stop looking at me like that, you know how hard you are to say no to when you do that."

He smiled, but then he nodded, moving to sit down on one of the benches along the wall. She followed. "Alright," he said, serious again. "If you don't want to, okay. Say no and I'll take it. But can I ask why?"

Vicki sighed. "It's not that I don't want to," she said. "You're right, we are great together, and, oh, you know I love you so much," she said, leaning back against the wall and rolling her head to look at him. It never got old, hearing that, and he smiled back at her. "It's just…" she went on. "We keep doing this on and off and on and off thing, and I'm leaving at the end of term, and I don't…It's going to be hard enough to go without breaking it off with you too."

Bucky nodded. "Who says we have to break it off, though?"

"How d'you mean?"

"I mean there's letters and telephones and things like that. You not being here doesn't mean we have to stop going out."

She sat up straighter and looked at him curiously. "You're serious?"

"I am," he replied. "Like I said, I was thinking a lot over the Break, and I think the reason we keep coming back to each other like this is because I can't let you go. Not all the way." He smiled at her softly. "I love you too, you know."

She smiled back. "I know." She tilted her head to the side, considering him thoughtfully. "You really think we can do this? It's a big step, especially for us."

He laughed a little at that, but he nodded. "I mean, I'm not saying I think we should get married or anything." That kind of thing was a long way off. Sure, he'd been thinking about life after school and stuff, and he could see Steve and Peggy doing that before too long, maybe, but he didn't think that's where he and Vicki were. But, who knew, maybe one day they would be. "But I'd like to see where we can go with this. I know it won't be easy, but if you're up for it, then I'm willing to put in the work."

She looked at him and didn't say anything for a couple of minutes, and he didn't say anything either, not wanting to rush her. A smile started creeping across her face, and she bit her lip like she was trying to keep it from stretching too far. "Alright," she agreed. "Let's do it."

"You really want to?" he asked hopefully.

"I really want to," she answered. "Oh, I could never let you go all the way either." She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him long and good, and, oh, man! Nobody could kiss like Vicki Marlowe. "And I've missed these lips."

"They've missed you too," he told her and kissed her again.

Steve was smirking at him as he slipped into his seat in Transfiguration right before the bell rang. "What?" Bucky asked.

"Getting back together with Vicki?" Steve asked.

He'd mentioned to Steve over Break that he'd missed her, but that was oddly perceptive as far as Steve and girls went. Bucky arched an eyebrow in surprise. "How'd you know that?"

Steve chuckled. "Because that's your Vicki Marlowe smile."

"I don't have a Vicki Marlowe smile," he protested, a little embarrassed. He hadn't realized he was that transparent.

"Yeah, you do," Steve said, pointing at his face. "It's that one right there. It hasn't changed since you were twelve."

Bucky grumbled a little at that, but didn't really have anything to say. Steve sure was one to talk! He'd only had a Peggy Carter smile since the day they got here.

Between his missions and the weird schedule the informal teams kept, it was rare that he actually got a chance to see one of his sister's Quidditch games. It worked out this first week, though, so on a sunny Friday afternoon, he and Vicki and Steve and Peggy and Jim headed down to the flat area by the lake to watch Becky and Esther's team play against one of the other Second-Year teams.

The game started with little fanfare—there wasn't an announcer, so they had to pay fairly close attention to keep up with what was going on. Since the make-shift goals were closer to the ground than the ones on the regular field, though, it was easier to see the action from where they sat. One of the Sixth-Years was refereeing.

"Oh, I miss Quidditch," Peggy sighed, watching as Eleanor, one of the Beaters on Becky's team, whacked a Bludger at the other team. Peggy had been a Beater when she played.

"You should come down and help coach them some time," Bucky suggested. He'd come down once or twice and was pleased to see that they had remembered most of the moves he had taught them.

"Oh, I don't know," she mused.

"No, they'd love it," Bucky said. "Based on what Becky tells me, you're pretty popular with the lower grades."

"I am?"

"Well, sure," Vicki said, surprising them until they remembered she had a little brother in Third Year. "The girls all think you're just fantastic, what with playing Quidditch and all your secret spy work and fighting in the war and everything."

"And the going out with Steve Rogers, too," Jim added with a grin. Esther's crush on Steve had lessened, but not abated entirely.

"Yes, that too," Vicki agreed with a smile. "Something the boys are quite jealous of, by the way, seeing as it means you're taken."

Bucky grinned. Peggy was blushing, but she was nowhere near as red as Steve.

"Seriously, Pegs," Bucky said, reaching over and bumping her arm. "You want to come down and coach them some afternoon, it would make their day."

She was still a little bit red, but she was smiling. "It does sound rather fun," she said. "Maybe I will."

They all cheered when the Quaffle came flying down towards their end of the field and Becky pulled off a pretty impressive diving save.

The game went on, and Vicki leaned over onto Bucky's shoulder. "I was never much of one for Quidditch, to be honest. I _did_ enjoy watching you play, though."

"Oh, yeah?" Bucky asked, rolling his head to look at her with a smile.

"Mm-hmm. You move beautifully." She kissed him quickly on the cheek. "And you look very dashing with wind-swept hair."

He smiled and kissed her and pulled her a little closer to watch the rest of the game.

The game went on until the sun started to go down. It was hard to see the Snitch out here, and there had been a couple of games where it had actually gotten confused by the lack of walls and wandered off and gotten lost. The sunset helped, though, and Esther finally caught the glint of gold and managed to catch it for a victory.

They all jumped to their feet cheering and clapping. "Hey, great job, Munchkin!" Bucky said, looping an arm around Becky's shoulders when she came over and kissing the side of her head.

"Some very nice saves," Vicki agreed. She had to run off after that—the game had run late and with N.E.W.T.'s coming up, she had a lot of studying to do—but she patted Becky's shoulder and kissed Bucky on the cheek before she left.

"Congratulations," Steve told her, giving her a hug. "Nice flying."

Jim and Peggy congratulated her as well, and then Esther came over and they all praised her for a job well done too. Becky was beaming, and Bucky looped an arm over her shoulders, glad to see her so happy. "You did really good today," he told her proudly.

"I know," she said smugly, before bouncing up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I had a good teacher."

They walked back up to the castle, Becky and Esther excitedly breaking down every play as they went. Peggy chimed in with some advice, and Bucky grinned. She was going to be down there coaching for sure.

* * *

_So we finally got to see Becky play Quidditch, and everyone's had some nice, soft, restful time after Austria. Back to work on Monday!_


	62. The Spy Makes A Mistake

_Everyone's rested up and recovered and enjoying a nice slow start to the term, but the spy is still out there causing trouble for our heroes. But the scales might be starting to tip the other way...  
_

* * *

Their first week back, Peggy had the team coming in to get ready for another mission. Not a factory run this time, but they'd found a compound in Morocco that seemed to consist mostly of weapons storage and laboratories.

"There's not anything we want out of there," Peggy told them. She smiled. "Basically, we just want you to go in and blow the place to hell."

"You're serious?" Dugan asked, his eyes lighting up. "We're not saving anything, just blowing it up?" Steve chuckled at his excitement. It had been weeks since the poor guy had gotten to blow anything up.

Peggy nodded.

"Oh, Peggy Carter, I love you," Dugan enthused.

"That's Steve's line," Bucky said from across the table.

"Yes, it is," Steve agreed.

"I'll fight you for her," Dugan replied.

"As entertaining as that would be…" Peggy said with a smile. She drew their attention back to the briefing and planning for the upcoming weekend.

They finished up their planning, ready to go early Friday morning. Steve hung back as the others headed for dinner. "Hey, Peggy?"

She looked up from her tidying up. (Steve had offered to help with that before, but he wasn't allowed to—she had a system and he didn't know where everything was supposed to go.) "Yeah?"

"I, uh, I'm sorry I missed giving you this when we got back, but…" He held out a thin, green box that had been in the bottom of his school bag. "Happy birthday." She'd turned seventeen over the Easter Break.

Smiling, she put down her papers and stepped forward to accept the box. "You didn't have to do that," she said.

"Sure I did. Not every day your best girl turns seventeen."

She grinned and pulled the lid off, and he watched her carefully. Seventeen was a big birthday, and he really hadn't been sure what to get. He was aware that his choice was a little unusual, but he hoped it was the right one.

"Oh," she breathed, lifting out the shining silver knife. "Oh, that is lovely," she said, setting the box aside and examining the blade.

"You really like it?" Steve asked. He'd gotten it at the same place he'd gotten Bucky's knife. This one was smaller and thinner, meant to be hidden in a boot (or wherever Peggy hid things), but it had the same magically enhanced blade that would never dull or break. Steve knew concealable weaponry wasn't the sort of thing you usually got a girlfriend, but it seemed like something Peggy would appreciate.

"I love it," she declared. She bent and slid it into the top of her boot, smiling at the way it fit, then stood up and wrapped her arms around Steve's neck to pull herself up to kiss him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said. He arched a mischievous eyebrow. "A good enough present to convince you not to leave me for Dugan?"

She laughed. "It certainly is a strong argument. Besides, I don't know about that mustache. It'd have to be like kissing a badger."

Steve laughed at that and picked her up off the ground, kissing her soundly.

"Mm, yes," she said when he set her back down. "I think I'll keep you."

"Good," he replied with a smile. He twined his fingers through hers. "Ready for dinner?"

The mission that weekend went fairly smoothly. They destroyed the compound, and though there had been more numbers to fight their way through than originally anticipated, they'd kind of been expecting that. Until they caught this spy, it just seemed smarter to act like every mission was compromised.

Peggy and Phillips were working hard to catch the spy, Steve knew. They were poring over every bit of intel they had, even set a trap or two, but this guy was good. He managed to stay out of reach, though Peggy's digging did uncover a couple of lower-level spies. Not that Phillips ever displayed a great range of emotion, but Steve didn't know if he'd ever seen him so proud as when she nailed them down. Steve was proud of her for that too, but she wasn't satisfied. The ones she'd caught hadn't caused near the damage this one had, and she was determined to track him down.

Every week or two, they would have another joint mission with the 107th and 89th to take out another factory. Each mission was ultimately successful, in that the prisoners were freed and the factories were destroyed. They were taking some pretty good hits, though—injuries were heavy on each mission, and the casualty count kept rising. By the time they had taken out five factories, the 89th had lost seven people, and the 107th had lost five. No matter how much Steve knew that that kind of thing happened in combat, it still tore him up inside that he wasn't able to stop it. If only they could catch this guy, maybe they could regain the upper hand. Steve knew that wouldn't guarantee anyone's safety, but it would sure help.

As the end of term came in sight, Phillips started sending them out on fewer missions, standing firm on his declaration that they be given time to fulfill the 'student' part of their student-soldier roles. Exams were coming up, with N.E.W.T.'s on the way for several of the upperclassmen. Steve was frustrated that they'd made no progress in tracking down the spy, but a break from combat would be good for everyone, and people would be safe.

A break was what they all needed, but a mission came up two weeks before exams that couldn't wait.

"I'm supposed to be studying for end of term exams and we've got a mission?" Jim whined as they gathered at their Wednesday meeting.

"You did sign on for this, you know," Peggy pointed out.

"Yeah, but you could give a guy a chance to actually pass some classes," he argued.

"I'm afraid we have to work to Hydra's calendar," she said, unperturbed. "I do keep trying to get them to work to your schedule, but they won't take the hint."

"It's bad enough to be evil incarnate, they have to be rude too?" Jim sighed, taking the folder she was holding out.

Steve chuckled and leafed through the folder Peggy had given him. S.S.R. spies had discovered what amounted, in essence, to Schmidt's summer home. It was a small castle in the Romanian mountains, misty and rainy and not really what Steve would call a summer home, but that was beside the point. They weren't looking to fight Schmidt—they had to go now because they were actually counting on him _not_ being there—but the intelligence that could be gathered in a place like that was well worth the trouble of knocking down the front door.

"Sweet, we get a mission in a castle," Dugan said, flipping through his own folder.

Gabe looked up at him. "We live in a castle. Why is that exciting?"

"Because all our missions are in factories and shady neighborhoods and caves and crap. An actual magical castle that we don't live in and, thus, don't know anything about, is cool. It's like we're going on a quest or something," he argued.

"Again," Monty said. "We go on 'quests', if you want to call them that, on a fairly regular basis."

"I don't want to call them that," Dugan argued.

"Une mission dans un château en montagne est comme un film," Jacques put in. "Comme le Roi Arthur."

"Exactly," Dugan agreed. "Like a King Arthur movie!"

Gabe and Monty exchanged dubious looks.

"If we could get back to the mission at hand," Peggy interrupted, amusement twinkling in her eyes.

"Yes, Ma'am," Dugan said, turning to face her eagerly. "Tell us more about the castle."

"Well," she said, still smiling. "There is a lot that we want you to collect while you're there, but once you've done that, we want you to blow it up."

"Yes!" Dugan crowed, exchanging gleeful high fives with Jacques and Monty.

There were lots of things she wanted them to be on the lookout for, particularly any mention of the Valkyrie or Tesseract. Anything they could find in the house was fair game, though, and then when they were done, blowing the place up would give Schmidt one less place to hide.

"Hey, can I ask," Jim started curiously, looking up from his folder. "Not that I don't think we can handle this, but this is Schmidt's house. It's top-level stuff. Why are you sending us in instead of a bunch of Aurors?"

Steve looked up at Peggy, who was biting her lip in contemplation. He'd wondered that too, but he wasn't going to ask. Peggy had good reasons for sending them where she did.

Peggy sighed. "We're sending you _because_ it's so important. That spy that's been making our lives hell is still out there, and…" She smiled up at them with a smile that was both proud and a little sad. "You're the only team we trust enough to do it."

The group was silent for a minute as they took that in. "We won't let you down, Pegs," Jim said solemnly. The other boys all nodded in agreement.

"I know," she said, a little waver of emotion in her voice.

Since they'd be gone over the weekend, Steve and Bucky spent most of the evening working ahead on their homework. In Potions the next morning, they groaned along with the rest of the class when Kendall set them a ten-page essay for Monday—a page for each ingredient of the Nine-Herb Charm, and a page on the final product itself. And that was on top of the studying for exams they were doing.

"Complain about it all you like," Kendall told them. "Ten pages from ten of you—you're not the ones who are going to have to read one hundred pages of your drivel."

"Well, then, why'd you assign it to us?" Jim muttered unhappily under his breath.

"Because you chose to take O.W.L.-level Potions, Mr. Morita, and that's the sort of workload you should really have come to expect by now," Kendall said and Jim grimaced. He'd evidently forgotten how sharp his hearing was. "And five points from Ravenclaw for cheek," he added, sniffing and pushing his glasses back up his nose.

Jim waited until he turned around before sticking his tongue out at his retreating back. Bucky snorted to himself and Steve shot Jim a sympathetic look, but just pulled out a sheet of parchment and started taking notes on stinging nettles.

"You know, I'm glad Phillips sends out notifications of who's going to be gone on missions and gets homework extensions," Bucky said as they left. He bumped Jim with his shoulder. "Can you imagine Kendall's face if you went up to him after that and said, 'Hey, by the way, I've got a mission this weekend, so I'm going to need an extension on that ridiculous essay."

Jim snorted. "Yeah, I can imagine the look, which is why, if it was our job to do that, I would have sent Steve."

"Hey!" Steve protested.

"You're in charge," Jim told him, clapping his shoulder. "That's one of the burdens of leadership."

"Yeah, well, considering I think Kendall hates me just as much as he hates every other student in his class, I'm glad that's Phillips' job," Steve replied. Bucky and Jim laughed at that, and Steve thought he even heard a chuckle from Ethan Green as he came out of class behind them.

They made it through the rest of the day with, all things considered, a light load of homework, so after working for an hour or so, he, Bucky and Jacques set the homework aside and started packing for their mission the next day. Dave was frowning from the other side of the room, because, sure, they were a specialty team and all, but did they really need keep their guns under their beds all the time? Jacques responded by pulling out several (unarmed) explosives that he kept under his, and though that might have been funny, it did nothing to make Dave feel better.

It was barely after sunrise when they left the next morning, but Peggy was there to see them off as usual and remind them to be careful. Becky and Esther were there too, as was Vicki Marlowe. She'd only started coming to see them off this term—it was part of that thing she and Bucky were doing where they were both putting a little more effort into their relationship.

"So, what's going to happen with you two when Vicki leaves in a couple of weeks?" Steve wondered.

"We'll keep working on it. What?" Bucky asked. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Nothing," Steve said, smiling. He bumped Bucky with his shoulder. "I hope it works out," he said sincerely. He'd always known Vicki was special to Bucky, the way he kept circling back to her. About time they got things figured out.

From the school gates, they apparated into the eastern Carpathian Mountains. They had a fair hike ahead of them—they were a couple of miles out to avoid any detection spells Schmidt had set up on the place. "Watch out for bears and wolves," Monty told them as they checked their direction and started hiking. "There's a lot of those around here."

"Just, like, regular bears and wolves, right?" Gabe clarified. "Not giant magic ones or anything?"

"Well, they do have werewolves, but not up here in the mountains, I would think."

Monty's knowledge of magical creatures was usually pretty trustworthy, so they were probably safe from werewolves. Wolves and bears were plenty to worry about.

It was only a couple of miles, but the way was rocky and steep and it took nearly all morning to reach where Schmidt's magical defenses began. They decided to sit down and have lunch outside the barrier before working on getting through. It was summer, so there wasn't any snow, but it was still pretty chilly this high up. Steve was glad their uniforms offered some protection from the cold, especially since building a fire was probably a bad idea. He took off his helmet and scratched the back of his head. He probably needed a haircut—it was getting long in the back and kind of itchy when he put his helmet on. He spun the helmet in his hands and contemplated the wing design on the side. Each of the Howlies had the little emblem somewhere on their mis-matched uniforms—most of them wore it on a sleeve (Bucky's was on his left, while his new Sergeant insignia was on his right.), although Jacques seemed to prefer his on a pocket. Gabe had sketched the design up not long after they got their name—he said they needed a cool symbol to go with their cool name, and they were the Howling Commandos and the wing had something to do with howling like the wind. Steve hadn't followed the entire explanation, but he traced his thumb over the symbol with a smile. Traceable reason or not, it was theirs.

After lunch, Jim and Dugan set to work on the barrier spell. It wasn't something they could just take down—they were giving Schmidt a little more credit than that—but patience and the right charms and tricks could get someone through it. It took another hour before they had it right. By combining a couple of physical charms they'd brought with them with the right incantations, one person could get through the barrier at a time. After going in, they'd take off the charms and toss them back across the barrier, then Jim and Dugan would repeat the process for the next guy. Eventually, they were all through and on the move again.

They ran across a couple of traps before Schmidt's castle finally came into view, but fortunately, they'd been on the lookout. There were patches of ground laced with Incinerating spells, Freezing spells, powdered slowstone, _Asphyxia_ curses, and something Dugan called a _Vashta Nerada_ curse—he tossed a leftover piece of ham into the seemingly empty space and it was devoured before it hit the ground. There was one point too where Bucky yanked Jim back before he stepped into a bear trap, and Jim seemed personally offended that Schmidt would include among his defenses something so mundane. Though they could see the castle through gaps in the trees, with avoiding the traps it took them nearly an hour to cross the forest that stood between it and the barrier spell.

Finally they came to the edge of the tree line, and the castle was visible at last. It was a long, low building, with dark stone set at sharp angles, giving the place a heavy, sinister feel. It was a lot smaller than Hogwarts—if it wasn't shaped like a castle, Steve almost would have just said it was a big stone house. It was plenty big enough for an evil genius's lair, though. It was going to take them a while to search the place.

"That's it?" Dugan complained. "We finally get a mission in a castle and that's it? It's like a house with a couple of towers."

"What kind of defenses are we looking at?" Steve asked him before he could really get going.

"Fairly minimal, actually, since we made it through all that," he replied, jerking a thumb back in the direction of the forest and the barrier spell. "I mean, we still can't just walk in, but…"

"There are people in there," Jim said. "I count seven, all on the entry level, and they're probably guards with the way they're moving around."

"Grouped together?"

"No. We're gonna have to sweep through pretty quick once we're in. Or make 'em come to us," Jim replied.

"Coming to us might be better," Bucky said, casting his eyes around the surrounding rocks and trees for threats. "Who knows what the hell kind of spells Schmidt has sitting around in there. Running around sounds like a great way to accidentally trip one."

"Good point," Steve agreed.

"Well, if we can get in," Monty said with a smile. "I'm sure we could come up with something distracting to draw the lads our way."

"Jacques, scope out the entrances," Steve said. "See what you can find."

Jacques shot him a salute and vanished into the trees. Hardly five minutes had passed when his voice crackled through the radio. "La porte arrièrre du côté sud est ouverte à votre convenance, messieurs," he said, a smile in his voice.

"What? He got the door open already?" Dugan wondered.

"Six years in, man," Gabe said, standing up. "I don't know why he still surprises you."

They crept toward the south end of the castle, keeping in the trees until the door Jacques mentioned was visible. It did look open, and as they got closer, Steve saw Jacques poke his head out to beckon them in, and also what looked like feet sticking out of the door. About seven feet in the air.

"What the hell?" Bucky wondered.

Jim laughed. "Oh, man, he's good." At the door, they realized the feet belonged to one of the seven guards, unconscious and levitating near the top of the door, half in and half out. "Nice," Jim said, and Jacques grinned.

"I don't get it," Gabe said.

Jim pointed up at the hovering guard. "We're not allowed in, but that guy is. And the spell's reading him in the door, so it's open. So, if we go under him…"

Steve grinned, nodding his approval at Jacques. "Very nice."

They all went in, and after securing the kitchen, Monty set about the business of setting up something to attract the other guards' attention. Jim did another check now that they were inside, and didn't read anyone but the six remaining guards. They hadn't been sure what they would find here, and Steve was glad it was only guards. He wouldn't have put it past Schmidt to keep prisoners in his house, and, knowing Hydra's penchant for human experimentation, Steve really didn't want to know what kinds of experiments Schmidt might keep somewhere he knew was secure and close at hand.

With some help from Dugan and Jim, Monty figured out what kind of sound the alarm spell on the door _should_ have made, and set up a duplicate on the kitchen floor. Once the team was in position around the entrances, Monty set off the spell, along with several small explosions, and the guards came running.

More intelligently than some of the Hydra soldiers they'd met before, while all the guards did come, they waited until they were all together before bursting through the kitchen doors. Steve's team still had the element of surprise, but these guys were good—Steve supposed Schmidt would want better than average soldiers guarding his house. The battle was quick, but it was brutal. Staggering to sit down before his profusely bleeding leg gave out from under him, Steve was supremely glad they'd decided to come when they were sure Schmidt wasn't here. He couldn't imagine what security would have been like with the head of Hydra at home.

Everyone was alive, but they were all bleeding or had something broken or worse. Jim was actually worst off—some curse had hit his leg, and though he'd managed to stop the bleeding and the pain, he couldn't move it at all. Everyone else was able to get themselves to him, though, and he was able to fix all of their injuries up—even Monty's left eye, which had taken a nasty curse and Jim had worried for a minute that he might lose it.

"Thanks," Monty said, blinking his eye experimentally. "Although, I imagine I would look rather dashing with an eyepatch."

"Nah, you're too skinny to be a good pirate," Dugan replied, looking up from where he was examining Jim's leg to see if he could figure the curse out.

"Anything?" Steve asked.

"No, it's one that just has to wear off," Dugan said, standing and shaking his head.

"Thought so," Jim replied. "Looked like two days to me. You think so?"

"At least," Dugan agreed.

Steve sighed. A man down and they were only one room in. "You're sure you're not hurt?" he asked.

"I'm sure," Jim said. "Actually, if you get me a crutch or something, I can move. I'm not gonna fight anybody," he added with a sigh as if he knew what Steve's next words were going to be. "But we're not picking anyone else up on the scans in the rest of the house, and if anyone else comes in, I don't want to be down a leg and hanging out by the back door."

Not that they would have left him here alone, but that was a good point. Besides which, if he really wasn't hurting, they could definitely use him checking for traps and spells through the rest of the house. "Okay," Steve said. He handed Bucky his shield and knelt down next to Jim. "If I carry you, can you keep up the checking for spells you're doing until we find a place further in to set up base?"

"Sure thing, Cap," Jim agreed, shifting around and looping his arms around Steve's neck as Steve pulled him onto his back.

"Alright," Steve said, shifting and adjusting Jim's weight. "Dugan, you take point. Bucky, you have our six?" Dugan moved to the front of the room and Bucky nodded. "It may take longer," Steve said. "But until we clear the place for spells, I think we should stick together. Let's move."

They slowly moved through the first level of the castle. Dugan was out front, checking for surprises, and Steve could hear Jim muttering by his ear as he sent spells out to scan the house. Away from the front and back doors, the first level was trap-free. Steve supposed that made sense, if this was where the guards stayed. There was a dangerous, but fairly simple spell blocking the door to the second floor, and Dugan was able to get it down. Steve's eyes widened a little as he took in the change in décor. Downstairs was obviously for the guards and, when Schmidt was around, the help. Comfortable, but utilitarian. Upstairs was obviously where Schmidt lived, and Steve was surprised at first by how luxurious it was—but then, he had only ever encountered Schmidt in his factories before, hadn't he? He supposed being the leader of Hydra paid well.

There were bedrooms and sitting rooms—not particularly well-warded. There was a library, a very large indoor garden, and several rooms that seemed to have no purpose other than to display some rather disturbing artwork.

"Guy likes to look at himself, huh?" Gabe mused, eyeing one of the larger paintings. It was a portrait of Schmidt as the Red Skull that took up nearly an entire wall. There were several like it, in this room and the next. As best Steve could tell, he was collecting portraits of himself in artistic styles from the past thousand years or so. There was even a stained-glass window.

"What in the hell is this supposed to be?" Dugan wondered, staring at a painting that was lots of lines and angles and, despite being almost entirely red, gave a distinct impression of teeth.

"I think it's a Cubist portrait of Schmidt," Steve said. "See, there's an eye over here. It's like five different sides of his face at once."

"Oh, yeah, I see it," Jim said from his perch on Steve's back. "Ugh," he said with a shudder. "Keep walking, Cap. That thing's gonna give me nightmares."

The third floor was smaller and mostly just storage, and the sun was starting to set outside by the time they had it and the second floor cleared. "Okay," Bucky said with a sigh. "I'm noticing a conspicuous absence of anything worth guarding this place so heavily for." He waved a hand back at the levels they'd cleared. "There's not even a study or an office up here."

"So, where does he keep whatever he's hiding?" Steve finished for him. He'd noticed the same thing. They weren't looking through everything, just clearing it for hostile spells at the moment, but there hadn't even been anything that looked like it warranted looking through.

"We still haven't done the dungeon level yet," Monty reminded them.

"That's where it's all gonna go to hell," Jim sighed.

"Thanks for that, man," Gabe said.

"I'm just sayin'," Jim protested. "Evil wizard scientist who lives in a castle in the mountains, basement level, dark, creepy dungeons, nothing of any interest up top…"

"Yeah, well," Steve sighed. "That's why we saved the basement level for last. Everybody ready?"

They nodded and descended the stairs. The entry to the basement from the main level was heavily warded, and it took Jim and Dugan a little while to get through it. Steve sighed. It wasn't going to be a picnic down there, but he really hoped Jim wasn't right.

The stairway down went on longer than Steve expected. It was dark and cold when they hit the bottom, and the corridor they were in felt cold and echoey. "How far down do you think we are?" Jim asked.

"I think we're inside the mountain now," Bucky said. He nodded at the wall. "Look." The walls were no longer the dark, heavy blocks that had built the upper levels, but raw stone.

Gabe let out a low whistle. "Man, this place could go on forever."

"Lemme check," Jim said. He waved his wand at the air, and though nothing happened that Steve could tell, after a minute, he nodded. "Oh, yeah. It's a hell of a lot bigger down here than upstairs."

Steve nodded. "Alright," he said, drawing in a deep breath. "We'd better get started."

The corridor they started in branched into others, with rooms carved out into the stone of the mountain. Some were small, some were behind locked doors, and some seemed to stretch out into vast caverns in the darkness beyond their doors. They didn't go into any of them. Right now, they focused simply on checking each door and hallway for trap spells and dismantling every one they found. They could explore once it was safe. The traps they found were nasty, but the sort of thing one would expect in an evil wizard's dungeon. As they went, Jacques crept along in the front with Dugan, muttering a map spell to help them keep track of where they were.

It took them three hours to clear the lower level. Once they were sure it was secure, they followed Jacques back to the entrance and set up base in one of the rooms by the stairs. They pulled out some lanterns and started unpacking their gear. Steve lowered Jim down to sit on the floor, and he felt kind of light-headed as he stood back up. It was well past time when he should have eaten dinner. It was past dinner time for everyone else too, so they set to lighting the fireplace along the back wall and getting out food. Bucky had brought a large frying pan in his magic bag, and Steve chuckled to himself as he overheard him instructing Monty on the best way to prepare the food. He'd really been paying attention when Mrs. Barnes taught them how to cook.

Gabe was pulling out and setting up the radio, pointing out some of the new features to Jim. They'd brought the heavier duty long-range one, and since Jim had a pretty good grasp on how the communication gear worked, he was going to be in charge of that since he couldn't walk anywhere anyway. Jacques was transferring his map spell onto several sheets of parchment so they'd be able to find their way around down here when they searched the rooms. Dugan and Steve busied themselves with setting up a security charm on the stairs that would only allow the seven of them in or out. Yeah, there wasn't anyone else here, but there was no point taking chances. By the time they were done with that, it was time to eat.

They all felt better after eating. Jacques handed around his copies of the map, and they looked over them and decided to start their search down at this end of the stairs and work their way to the other end of the level. Since the security spell was blocking the stairs, and Jim would be close enough to monitor it, they decided to split up to search. The place was huge, and they could cover more ground that way, but they double-checked all their radios and decided not to wander off too far from each other. Just in case.

The first couple of rooms Steve checked appeared to be holding cells of some kind. There were shackles on the walls and stains that looked like old blood on the floors, and Steve wondered how often Schmidt kept people chained up down here.

The next room was a lab of some kind, and Steve spent a while in there, checking through log books and examining a cupboard full of potions. The radio chirped at his shoulder from time to time—Jacques mentioning a box of books he'd found that looked interesting, or Bucky finding a set of floor plans to something. They decided that anything that looked like Peggy or Howard or Phillips needed to see it should be taken back to Jim in his front room. Steve scooped up a set of journals that seemed to detail Schmidt's attempts to study the serum in his own blood. They were old—Schmidt's interests had more recently shifted to the Tesseract, and Steve suspected he might not actually want to figure the serum out. He was all about the power, and power never wanted competition.

After taking the books back and checking in with Jim, Steve moved out again. He found a room filled with dusty, cobwebby machinery stacked around the edges. Once he got some light up, he was able to see it a little better and get a feel for the designs. They were similar to the guns and things they'd seen in combat before—early versions, maybe? He ran a couple of spells over them and tested a few of the ones that seemed safest. Nothing seemed operational, so, yeah, probably first drafts of more dangerous stuff. He didn't think any of it was worth lugging down to Jim's room to take back, but he did take the time to look over each piece carefully, and he took one of the newer ones apart and looked over the insides. Howard could look back at his memories of it and see if there was anything in the design worth knowing.

Gabe came over the radio and said that he'd found what looked like a parking garage. Dugan wasn't far from him and came to help him check it out—not just to examine the vehicles, but to see if, since it was a garage, if there were any entrances he needed to secure. Steve offered to come help, but Dugan said they had it, and they checked in with him every couple of minutes until they decided the garage was secure. Evidently, Schmidt got the vehicles in magically somehow, because there was no exit to drive through.

Steve felt like he'd hit the jackpot in the next room he came to. There was a large drawing desk in the middle of the room, and the shelves around it were stacked with rolls of parchment. As he unrolled them, he found architectural blueprints, weapon designs, anatomical drawings, sketches and diagrams of vehicles…One of them even looked a lot like the little submarine that Clemson had tried to escape from him with in the Thames after he'd taken the serum. On the desk itself was a diagram of some kind of machine—it was similar in shape to the capsule Howard had designed to help with the serum application, but it was bigger and more solid. Steve looked over it carefully, but couldn't figure out what it was for. The chemical notes along the sides seemed to suggest very cold temperatures—maybe some kind of storage. He unpinned it from the table carefully and rolled it up. He pondered the desk as he did so. The table was awfully low, and he knew Schmidt was very near the same height he was, if not a little taller. Zola was pretty short, though, and Steve's stomach turned as he realized he might be standing in the same spot the little scientist did when he worked up his twisted designs.

All the designs and schematics seemed like something worth saving, and it took him several trips back to Jim's room before he got it all out. He was pleased to see piles of things growing along the sides of the room. The rest of the team seemed to be having a productive raid as well.

Back into the corridors, and the next few rooms Steve went through didn't have much in them. One contained a bed—maybe for quick catnaps when going back upstairs was too much work. There were a couple of labs that didn't seem to have seen any use in a while—no notes or logs, glass beakers and heavy cauldrons coated in a thin layer of dust. Some of the rooms had nothing in them at all, and Steve guessed they were for storage, or had been carved out and not found a use for yet.

All the rooms were dark, and only a few of them had candles or light fixtures. All of the corridors were dark. Steve's wand lit his way, and the occasional burst of chatter from his radio reminded him he wasn't alone, but the further out he got, the darker and gloomier it felt. If he thought about it, he thought he could feel the entire mountain pressing down above him, the rocky ceiling groaning with the weight of it all. He shuddered and decided not to think about it.

He passed another empty room and wondered if maybe he'd gone farther into the space than Schmidt had gotten around to using when he rounded a corner and flung himself to the floor, his reflexes barely giving him enough warning to avoid the burst of magic that shot over his head and took a chunk out of the wall behind him.

Steve hit the ground and rolled, springing back to his feet with his shield and wand raised, then froze when he saw who was standing there aiming back at him.

"Bucky?!"

Bucky was standing eight feet away, his little light in a box from Becky in one hand and his wand—levelled at Steve's face—in the other. Even in the white light of the box he looked pale, and he was wide-eyed and vibrating with tension, breathing like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

"Whoa, Buck, it's me, it's okay," Steve said.

"Steve?" he asked, and he didn't sound at all sure about that.

"Yeah," Steve replied far more calmly than he felt, raising his hands slowly in a gesture of surrender. "It's me." He carefully snapped his shield back onto the clasps on his back and lowered his wand into his pocket. Bucky didn't look hurt, but something had clearly rattled him. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Bucky didn't shoot any more spells at him, but he kept his wand up and continued to eye him uncertainly. Keeping his hands up, Steve stepped forward gingerly. He reached out a hand, arching a questioning eyebrow, and when Bucky didn't object, he laid it carefully on his arm. "It's me," he said again. "I'm right here."

Bucky looked down at the hand on his arm, back up at Steve, and then let out a long, shuddering breath, almost crumpling in on himself as tension drained away and he lowered his wand. "Steve?" he breathed, and this time it wasn't unsure—he knew exactly who Steve was and he desperately needed his help.

"Yeah, Buck, I'm here," Steve said, moving forward to catch him as his knees buckled. "I gotcha." What the hell had happened to him?

"Steve," Bucky said again, his hands pawing at Steve's uniform like he was looking for an anchor. "What's…what…I don't…" he stammered, his eyes darting anxiously around the dark hallway. "Steve, I…"

"Bucky," Steve said. "Bucky, look at me. Look at me," he told him. He didn't know what had happened to get him here, but he recognized that look in his eyes and knew where his head was right now. Bucky pulled his eyes back to Steve's and Steve gripped his shoulders tightly. "This isn't Zola's lab."

"It's not?" Bucky asked softly, and the fear in his voice sounded so much younger than seventeen.

"It's not," Steve said firmly, shaking his shoulders a little. "You're not back there, Buck. You're not at the factory and you're not in the lab."

"Are you sure?" Bucky whispered.

"I'm sure," Steve said. "I promise."

Bucky swallowed and nodded. "Okay," he said shakily. He swallowed again, got his feet a little more firmly under him. "Okay," he said again, sounding a little more like his normal self. His eyes roamed around the hallway again before coming back to rest on Steve's face, and he was back now, but he was still scared. "Steve, where are we?"

Since seeing Bucky's ashen face, worry had been rolling in Steve's gut, but now it started to churn more forcefully. "We're in Romania," he told him. "That mission to Schmidt's house?"

"Mission?" Bucky asked, confusion furrowing his brow. "I don't…" He shook his head. "Steve, I don't remember coming here. How did we…What's going on?"

The only reason Steve's voice was still so calm was because he knew freaking out wouldn't help Bucky at all. "I don't know," he said. "But we'll figure this out, okay?" He looked at Bucky until he nodded, and he couldn't keep all the worry out of his voice as he asked his next question. "Buck, what happened?"

Bucky opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I don't know," he breathed. "Steve, I don't know!" That panic was starting to come back again.

Steve swallowed down a wave of anxious nausea rising in his throat. "Okay," he said, gripping Bucky's shoulders tighter. "Okay. Let's play it back. What do you remember?"

Bucky drew in a semi-steadying breath, his eyes narrowing in thought. "I…I don't know, I—I woke up on the floor."

"You woke up?" Steve asked, looking up at Bucky's hairline for any trace of blood. "Are you hurt?"

Bucky scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. "I don't think so."

"Okay," Steve said, not entirely satisfied with the answer. "Where did you wake up?"

Bucky waved at the darkness behind him. "Somewhere back there. I'm not sure. But it…it looked like a lab. There was a table and…stuff. And I had to get out of there. But it was just…dark. I walked for a long time. I didn't know where I was—I still don't know—but it was dark and there was no one around and I was really starting to freak out because I thought…That's why I was—wait, crap! Did I hurt you?" he asked, looking Steve up and down worriedly.

"No," Steve assured him. "You missed."

Bucky nodded, wincing. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Steve replied. "It was a good instinct. You generally want to shoot at things that surprise you in the dark." He got a ghost of a smile for that. He was going to ask why, if Bucky had woken up alone and unsure of where he was, why he hadn't called for help on the radio, but he noticed that it wasn't clipped to his shoulder anymore. It must have fallen off when he hit the floor. For whatever reason he'd hit the floor. Maybe he'd tripped a trap they missed or something. "And that's all you remember?"

Bucky nodded, swallowing nervously.

"Okay," Steve said, more confidently than he felt. "Okay. Let's go back and we'll get Jim to look you over, alright?"

"Jim's here?"

"Yeah, Buck. The whole team's here." What the hell had happened?!

"Cause we're on a mission," Bucky said, and it almost wasn't a question.

"Yeah," Steve said. He looped an arm over Bucky's shoulder and started steering him back the way he'd come. "Come on, we'll figure this out, okay?" The thought of whatever could have done this terrified him, but Bucky was scared, so, right now, Steve could be brave.

"Okay," Bucky agreed, falling into step with him, and if nothing else, Steve felt him relax a little as he leaned into him, so at least that was something.

Searching the rooms as he went, it had taken Steve a long time to get this far down the hallway, but walking straight back took about ten minutes. By the time they got there, Bucky was breathing easier, still obviously unnerved, but regaining his composure.

"Hey, guys," Jim greeted, fiddling with the radio as they walked in. "You bring me some more stuff to—whoa, what happened?"

"We're not sure," Steve said. Bucky was looking around the room like he was trying to remember if he'd seen it before, and with a little prompting he told Jim the same thing he'd told Steve.

"Uh huh," Jim replied, eyeing Bucky thoughtfully as he finished his story. "Okay, well, come over here and let me take a look at you. Grab a box or something for him, will you, Cap?"

Steve moved a box over so Bucky could sit in front of Jim's chair.

"Did something happen to your leg?" Bucky wondered, catching the way Jim's leg was propped on another chair.

"Yeah, I—oh, right, yeah, you don't remember. Got hit with a curse while we were fighting our way in. It'll wear off in a while. Here, lean in a little and let me see your head," Jim told him, gesturing with his hands for Bucky to move forward.

Bucky complied, and he looked mostly back to himself now, though Steve could still tell he was nervous. "Do you think we missed a trap spell or something?" Steve asked.

"Mm," Jim mused, running his hands carefully around the back of Bucky's head, then tilting his head back to check his eyes. "Maybe, but it would've had to be inside whatever room he was in. We got all the ones on the doors."

He continued his examination, and Steve took Bucky's wand and ran a check over it with _Priori Incantatum_ to see if that yielded any clues. The last spell Bucky had cast with the wand was the one he'd almost hit Steve with, then various illumination or security charms before that. He hadn't fought anyone since the battle in the kitchen.

Jim sat back and waved his wand over Bucky, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, you're not hurt. Are you feeling any pain anywhere?"

"No," Bucky replied. "I feel fine. Except for…"

"Except for missing a big chunk of time," Jim finished for him. "How much time _are_ you missing, actually? What's the last thing you remember?"

"Well, like I said, I woke up—"

"No, I mean before that," Jim interrupted. "You said you don't remember coming on the mission. But you don't seem surprised that we're _on_ a mission, and you know who we are and stuff, so it's not like whatever this is affected your whole memory."

Steve hadn't considered that horrifying possibility until Jim said it.

"So, what's the last thing you remember _before_ waking up on the floor?" Jim finished.

"Um…" Bucky considered. "We were in class. Professor Kendall had just gotten on your case for complaining about the essay, and we were talking about stinging nettles."

Jim and Steve looked at each other, and Steve wondered if Jim was as worried as he was.

"What?" Bucky asked, catching their expressions.

"Buck, that was…That was yesterday morning," Steve told him. He looked at Jim again then back at Bucky. "That was a day and a half ago."

"What?" Bucky demanded, his eyes widening. "I'm missing a day and a half? What the hell happened to me?!"

Jim tilted his head thoughtfully. "Hang on," he said. He pulled out his wand again. "Let me check something." He waved his wand contemplatively over Bucky, his eyes off to the side like he was listening to something. "Huh."

"No, don't…" Bucky said. "Don't diagnose me and then just say 'huh'. What is it?"

"Someone modified your memory," Jim replied. "That _Obliviate_ spell we talked about in Defense Against the Dark Arts last term. Pretty well done too, although that transition gives it away."

Bucky gaped, uncertain of what to say, but Steve's brain caught on the way Jim had said that. "You said some_one_," he said. "What makes you think it was a person, not a trap spell?"

"You can't use _Obliviate_ in a trap like that. I mean, you _could_, but it would just take out everything. To take out specific things, you need someone controlling the spell, directing it," Jim explained.

"Wait, this memory is actually _taken out_ of my head?" Bucky asked.

"Maybe," Jim allowed. "It might just be covered up."

"So I could get it back?"

Jim shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. There's a lot of factors involved in that. Things like how powerfully the spell was cast, how much was erased and how old or significant it is…"

"You're telling me I might never get this back?!" Bucky asked, a nervous tightening in his voice.

"I don't know," Jim said. "I'd say your chances are better since we caught it so soon, but I don't know enough about it to say. This is a Rains and Phillips question."

"So, there's someone else here," Steve said. The fact that someone had messed with the inside of Bucky's head—again—was infuriating, but the presence of someone hostile was more immediately threatening.

"We should warn the other guys," Jim said, reaching for the radio.

"Wait!" Steve said, shooting out a hand to grab Jim's wrist. Bucky's radio was missing. Maybe he hadn't just dropped it. "Whoever did this, they might have Bucky's radio," he said. Both Jim's and Bucky's eyes went to Bucky's shoulder where the radio should have been. "Use a Patronus."

"Right," Jim agreed. "Don't want to tip him off." He waved his wand and four little silver otters popped into existence in front of them.

"Tell them to pair up," Steve said. "We don't want anyone else getting jumped."

Jim nodded, then spoke to the Patronuses. "Guys, we've got an unknown hostile in play who may have one of our radios. Pair up and keep an eye out and do another security sweep. Report back in with Patronuses every ten—" He looked up at Steve and corrected himself. "Five minutes. Every five minutes to either me or Cap." He nodded and the little otters dashed off into the darkness.

Steve's mind was overflowing with questions, but for the moment, he just pulled up another box and sat down next to Bucky, close enough that their shoulders were touching. Bucky didn't look like he was about to panic anymore, but he kind of looked like he wanted to throw up.

"Alright," Steve said, looking over at Jim. "Whoever this is, how did they get in here?"

"I've been checking that spell you and Dugan put on the door every few minutes," Jim said. "It hasn't been touched. They didn't get in that way."

"So, there's another entrance."

"Must be."

"It'd have to be someone who's familiar with the layout of the place," Steve mused. "Since no other doors turned up while we were checking things out. Some kind of secret entrance, maybe. Can you tell if they're still here?"

Jim shook his head. "I checked as soon as I sent the Patronuses off. That spell doesn't have the range for a place this big."

Steve nodded. He'd thought that would be the case. "Why would somebody do this?" he wondered.

"He must've seen something they didn't want him to see," Jim replied.

"Yeah, no, I know," Steve protested. "I just mean, this is Hydra we're dealing with. Why not just kill him?"

Jim opened his mouth, then closed it again. "That…That's a good question."

"I mean, I'm glad they didn't," Steve continued. "But it doesn't make sense."

"Because I knew them," Bucky said quietly, startling them both.

"You remember?" Steve asked hopefully.

"No," Bucky said, shaking his head. "But think about it. You checked my wand," he said, nodding at Steve. "Except for what I shot at you, I didn't attack anybody or even cast any defensive spells. If I'd come across some random Hydra agent, I wouldn't've just stood there. But if it was someone I knew…"

"Then you wouldn't attack," Steve agreed.

"I might be surprised, but not on the defensive," Bucky went on. "I…" His mouth dropped open as realization dawned in his eyes. "The spy," he said. "It has to be the spy."

"How d'you figure?" Jim asked curiously.

"Because it's someone I must know, but someone who shouldn't've been here," Bucky said. "Like, okay, I know it's not anybody on our team, but just for example's sake, say Dugan was the spy. If I saw him going through stuff in a room down here, I'd just be like, 'Well, that's his job. Okay, I'll go to the next room'. But if it was like, Howard or something…"

"You wouldn't react like he was hostile but you'd wonder why he was here," Jim concluded.

"And no matter how well he explained it, he couldn't risk you saying anything about it once we got home," Steve finished.

"Exactly," Bucky said. "So, whoever it was would have to wipe my memory of meeting them or just kill me. And they didn't kill me because, I mean, what would you guys have done if you'd found my dead body on the floor?"

Steve shoved that image out of his head and just answered the question. "We'd lock the place down." He was tracking Bucky's train of thought now. "And whoever this was, killing us wasn't their goal; they were here to get something out before we found it. They were short on time."

"Going off your last check in," Jim said, pondering his copy of the map. "You were a few rooms down, but in the same hallway as Gabe. And the spy may not have known that Gabe was that close, but he'd know we were all here and someone would have to be close."

"So he buys himself time," Bucky said. He huffed a disgusted sigh. "He probably got out while I was wandering around and freaking out."

Steve inclined his head. Bucky was probably right, but it was hardly his fault. "Buck, you can't blame yourself for that. Besides, even if one of us had found you right away, the spy would still have plenty of time to get out—we still would have regrouped and tried to figure out what was going on just like we're doing now."

They were interrupted just then by the Patronuses reporting in—Dugan's giant dog and Gabe's bobcat both had nothing to report. Jim sent the otters out again to let them know odds were good that if they found someone, it would be someone they knew.

"So now what?" Bucky asked.

"Now we need to get you back to the infirmary," Steve said.

"The mission's not over," Bucky argued.

"Buck, you don't even know what the mission is!" Steve snapped. He regretted that the second the words were out of his mouth. "Sorry. I—"

"It's alright," Bucky said. The look in his eyes told Steve he understood. "But I'm not hurt, and I want to help."

Steve looked over at Jim. "If he stays, will that decrease his chances of getting his memory back?"

"No," Jim said.

"But you said something about catching it so soon," Steve argued.

"Yeah," Jim replied. "But it's not…It just targeted a specific memory. It's not still eating away at his brain or anything. What I meant about catching it so soon was that the longer you go without realizing your memory was modified, the harder it is to find what needs fixing. Your brain starts to normalize it, work around the glitches and stuff to try to heal itself. Especially if it's a smooth transition. If it's just a big old hole, you're gonna be aware of it no matter how long it is, but if whoever did the modifying was careful about starting and stopping, it's hard to figure out what to fix. It's a more noticeable gap, and Bucky caught this almost right off, so his conscious brain's not gonna let his subconscious brain gloss over it. It'll be equally as easy or as hard to fix when we get home as it would be right now."

"You're sure?" Steve pressed.

"I'm sure," Jim said. "I'd grab him and apparate him home myself if I thought he needed it."

Bucky glowered at that, but Steve chuckled. "Okay." He knew Jim took the health of the team very seriously, and he trusted his judgement.

They decided to wait until the other four had finished their security sweep rather than try to get in the middle of it. The dog and the bobcat came back a few more times to report, but by the end they said that they'd run every scanning spell and security check they could think of, and they hadn't found anyone but themselves. The spy had gotten away. Steve and Bucky moved out again to resume their searching of the rooms, and Steve told the other teams to stay in pairs and to keep communicating only with Patronuses, just in case. He had Jim radio back to Peggy on a different frequency to tell her what happened and have her be on the lookout for anyone coming and going suddenly.

"You're sure you're okay?" he asked Bucky as they searched another lab.

"No, I'm not okay," Bucky said, flipping through a log of experiments. "They got in my head again, Steve, and they took something out, and…" He swallowed hard and looked up from the logbook. "And I'm…I feel angry and I feel scared and I feel…_violated_. But they're not gonna beat me." His voice shook a little bit, but resolution crept back into his features. "I decided that a year and a half ago; they are _never_ going to beat me. I'm gonna finish this mission, because Johann Schmidt and everything he stands for deserves to burn in Hell. Then I'm gonna go home, and I don't care what Rains or Phillips has to do to get these memories back—I'm gonna let them do it, because that spy deserves to burn with him!"

Steve nodded and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Let's do it, then."

They worked throughout the night. It was a long job, and they could have slept in shifts back in the base room with Jim, but nobody felt like sleeping after what happened to Bucky. Everyone wanted to get out and get home. Bucky was working with a cold, silent determination, and Steve didn't try to distract him. Bucky was right, this needed to get done, and he didn't know what to say anyway to make what happened better. He hoped that just being there was doing something to help, and though Bucky never lost his intensity for the task at hand, he did seem to settle as the night wore on.

Around seven in the morning, they stopped and regrouped back in Jim's room for breakfast and to touch base. Based on the map and where they'd been, they guessed they had a little over two thirds of the place done. If they kept up this pace, they should be done this afternoon and home around dinner time.

"This is it," Bucky said as they stepped into a new room. "This is where I woke up," he explained. Looking around the large room, Steve could easily see why a memory-wiped Bucky would have been afraid he was back in Zola's lab. The place was definitely a lab, and while one half of it appeared to be for machinery, the other half was very clearly used for work on people. There was a blood-stained metal gurney, tables of syringes and beakers and vials with the dried residue of questionable-looking liquids inside, and a shelf of surgical equipment that, on closer inspection, had not been well-cleaned after its last use. Over to one side was a desk littered with scraps of paper, its drawers and those of the filing cabinet next to it empty and hanging carelessly open. Someone had been in a hurry.

"I guess this is what they were after," Bucky said, looking over the desk. Nothing remained to give any hint as to what the contents may have been. The scraps of paper littering the top were just that—scraps. Even the trash can was empty.

"They must not have gotten word we were coming until we were already here," Steve said. "Otherwise they would've gotten here before us."

Bucky nodded in agreement. "Does that mean we're finally starting to catch up with him?"

"I hope so," Steve said. "I've just about had it with this guy."

Bucky huffed a laugh. "'Just about'? He's almost gotten you killed, like, twenty times this year. How many more is it gonna take?"

Steve snorted but he smiled, glad that Bucky was back to making jokes and complaining.

By midafternoon, they'd completed their sweep of the dungeon. Their haul was quite substantial, and it seemed like the easiest way to cart everything back was via the fireplace. Jim and Steve worked on setting up the connection back to school while Monty, Dugan and Jacques swept through the rest of the place laying their explosives. Once they got the fireplace going, Gabe went through, and Steve and Bucky carried things to the fire and tossed them in for Gabe to catch and set aside. They were going directly into Phillips' office—no one else needed to see what was coming through.

After everything was through, Steve radioed Dugan to let them know they were heading out. (Dugan, Monty and Jacques were going to leave the house and flip the detonators on the explosives from a safe distance. Once the warding went up in flames with the castle, they would apparate back to Hogsmeade.) He picked up Jim again, and, after some debate, they decided it would better if Steve carried him against his chest instead of on his back—less chance of their heads knocking together as they spun. Bucky grabbed the rest of the gear and followed after.

Stepping in to Phillips' normally immaculate office was like stepping into a junk shop. A small path between the fireplace and the door was all that remained clear. Phillips was grumbling to himself, already sorting the piles of things they'd brought back. He gave them a quick analytical nod, then grunted in greeting and returned to his work. Peggy and Gabe were there too, along with Nurse Rains.

After they gave a quick report, Rains started to shuffle them towards the infirmary, Jim on Steve's back again.

"Wait a minute, Gwyneth," Phillips said, and it took Steve a second of wondering who he was talking to before realizing that Rains must have a first name.

Phillips stepped away from his sorting. He nodded his head in Bucky's direction. "If you end up needing help with this one, don't ask anyone but me. If it's beyond us together, we'll send him to St. Mungo's, but no one outside this room needs to know what's wrong with him. If whoever did this realizes we're trying to get this memory back, they'll try to kill him." He cast a sharp eye over all of them, then looked at Gabe. "Jones, you head for the gates, meet the rest of your team, and make sure they know not to say a word."

"Yes, Sir," Gabe said, nodding quickly and heading for the door.

"We'll need to put him in a private room," Phillips went on, looking back at Rains. "And we'll need some sort of excuse—"

Rains cut him off with a smile that scared Steve just a little bit. "Oh, don't you worry," she said. "I've got this well in hand. And when this works, you save a piece of this snake for me."

* * *

_Will Bucky and Steve run into another dead end, or has the spy made a fatal mistake? Tune in Friday to find out!_


	63. A Trip Down Memory Lane

_Lots to think about while Bucky tries to dig up his memory of meeting the spy and uncovers some other memories along the way._

* * *

Bucky was laying on a bed in a small room off the back of the infirmary staring at the ceiling. Nurse Rains had gotten Steve to carry him up to the infirmary in case anyone saw him, and after quizzing Jim on the spells he'd helped dismantle at the castle while she looked over his leg, she'd started putting the story out that Bucky had gotten caught in one of the nastier trap spells. Bucky had to admit that he wouldn't have thought of the detail of making sure it was a trap that _was_ in the castle since no one knew how detailed the spy's knowledge was of the place, and he wondered just what exactly Rains did in connection with the S.S.R.

After she'd gotten that settled, she came in and performed another examination, muttering as she did so and alternating between the comforting reassurances he was used to hearing when she took care of him and a series of scathing insults directed at whoever had done this. It would seem this spell was more unpredictable than Jim had realized and could have done a lot more damage, and she was nothing short of enraged that someone had dared to use it on a teenager.

"Don't you worry, though, love," she told him. "We'll sort this, you and I. Now, lie back and close your eyes. I'm going to have a look at that memory, and it may be a bit jarring, but just try to relax."

Bucky obeyed, and as he closed his eyes, he felt his mind rolling back to Thursday morning. There was Jim, complaining about the essay, and Kendall taking away House points and continuing with the lecture. In the middle of a sentence about the right way to dry out stinging nettles, there was an explosion of light, a loud, screeching crash, and then Bucky was picking himself up off the floor in a dark room, and he didn't know how the hell he got here and it looked an awful lot like…no. No! He couldn't be back there, he—

His eyes snapped open and he jerked up on the bed with a gasp, and then a small hand was on his chest and Nurse Rains was there and it was okay, he was back at Hogwarts.

"It's alright, love," she soothed, and Bucky swallowed and nodded and she allowed him to sit up. "It's alright," she said again. "I'm sorry about that, I know it was rough. I've got it now, though," she said, tapping a little vial with a silvery memory floating inside. "I'm going to have to have a closer look at this, but in the meantime, why don't you take this and try to get some rest?"

"What is it?" Bucky asked, peering into the cup of pale pink liquid she was offering.

"It's a rare memory modification spell that removes something entirely," she replied. "Odds are good that what we're after is still in there somewhere, but whether or not we can get at it is what I need to look into. That," she said, pointing at the cup. "Is a fairly generic memory enhancement potion. It's not likely it'll bring back what we're looking for, but it won't hurt anything, and I'm hoping it will shake a few things loose—make it easier for us to dig down after this missing one."

"Okay," Bucky agreed, swallowing the potion. It tasted like rice. Rains took the cup back and left the room, and Bucky laid back down, yawning as he felt the potion start to work its way through his body. He wondered if it was making him sleepy, or if he was just tired because he hadn't slept last night.

He wasn't aware of falling asleep, but he was sort of aware of the fact that he wasn't awake—he felt like he was sitting in a theater watching memories roll by on the screen. They were mostly old memories, things he hadn't thought about in a long time. The enhancement potion brought them back as clear as if they were yesterday.

He was in the yard at the church, three years old. Some of the bigger boys were playing and they knocked down a tiny little blond kid and ran off laughing while he sat on the grass and tried not to cry. Bucky approached him and patted him on the back and wiped the blood from off his nose with his sleeve, then helped him get up and find his mom. As clear as if he was still standing there with his hand wrapped around Steve's skinny little fingers, he could see the wonder and the gratitude shining up out of those little blue eyes and he could feel the warm swelling in his own chest deciding that he was going to take care of this little guy and they were gonna be friends.

He was in his living room, four years old. There was a basket with a bed inside and he was standing up on an ottoman to look inside at his new sister. She was pink and squinty and even littler than Steve was, and he was gonna have to look after her too because he didn't know how someone that little could even be alive. She squeaked and opened her eyes and they were blue just like his, and in that moment he was right there, her soft, warm little fingers wrapped around the one he held out to her and his cheeks aching because his face was just too small for the smile that was stretching across it.

Five years old and that same little baby was big now, with fat little legs and dark curly hair, and he was sitting on the floor with his arms out wide as she toddled across the rug. He felt her weight on his lap as she collapsed onto his legs, felt that smile that was too big for his face again when she cackled happily with that laugh like sunshine.

Still five years old, and now he was in a hospital and everything smelled harsh and clean, and his mama was holding him tightly and Mrs. Rogers was scared and Steve wasn't waking up. Bucky had been scared before, when the thunder was loud, or when he got lost, and he was scared of the dark. But this was a different kind of scared, and he felt it twisting his stomach into a knot like he was still on his mother's lap in that hospital chair and his friend who was little and sick was lying on the bed in front of them, not breathing like he was supposed to and not getting better.

On and on they went: His first day of school and how itchy his school clothes were; deciding that even though he didn't like it when people called him 'James', it wasn't so bad when Becky called him 'Jay' because that was her special name just for him; how awful he felt when he accidentally hit Steve in the face with a baseball and how he'd avoided him for a couple of days out of guilt until Steve marched into his room and sat on the end of his bed and stared at him until he talked to him again; that time he and Steve found a sick little kitten in the alley and tried to take care of it and how scared he'd been when it died—he'd been taking care of it as best he could and it died anyway, and if his best wasn't enough to keep it alive that meant the same thing might happen to Steve or Becky one day; the day his Hogwarts letter came and the thrill of excitement and nerves that had almost knocked him over, and the way Steve had burst through the front door with the sheet of parchment clenched in his fist and practically glowing because he'd gotten one too.

He couldn't control what came and went—some memories were pleasant surprises long forgotten, and others were painful things that he hadn't forgotten but had locked away and tried to forget—it all shook loose and flowed through his head, and the pain of something like Arthur's death or the feel of Zola's hands inside his chest cavity would be tempered by the soft, sweet moments curled up in a chair with Becky teaching her how to read or watching Steve smile as he unwrapped the book Bucky gave him for his birthday.

He came awake as slowly as he'd fallen asleep, not realizing he was actually awake until he tried to place the memory he was in and realized that it wasn't one.

"Hey, Buck," Steve said, smiling over from the chair by the bed.

"Hey, Steve." He sat up and then Steve's hand was around his arm, keeping him from going over the side of the bed.

"Whoa, easy," Steve said, pulling him back up and moving him to lie down again. "Rains said you might be kind of dizzy when you woke up."

"Well, she was right," Bucky groaned, pressing a hand to the side of his head. He blinked several times and the room seemed to stop spinning, but it was probably a good idea to stay horizontal for another few minutes.

"She also said it would help if you ate," Steve told him, holding out a plate with a sandwich on it. At least that was something he could eat lying down. And he _was_ hungry. "I guess it didn't work, huh?"

"You mean for finding who jumped me? No. Shook some other stuff loose I haven't thought about in a while, though." He looked over at Steve thoughtfully. He knew Steve used to be little, but it was weird remembering just _how_ little he'd been.

"Good stuff?"

"Mostly." He finished his sandwich and sat up carefully, still feeling a little dizzy, but able to stay up if he leaned against the wall. "Rains find anything?"

"No," Steve told him. "She's still working on it."

Bucky nodded. "Hey, what did she tell people was wrong with me? I mean, I know I'm supposed to have tripped one of the trap spells, but…"

"Oh, yeah. Apparently, you got caught in one that triggered involuntary transfiguration, so they're keeping you in here under restraints until they figure out how to turn it off because you keep turning into things that want to kill everyone else."

"Wow," Bucky said. "That was really one of the spells we took down?"

"Yeah. Schmidt wasn't playing around."

"No kidding," Bucky huffed. "Hey, wait, what about Becky? What'd they tell her?"

"She got the same transfiguration story everybody else did," Steve answered. He grimaced. "She's pretty freaked out about it, but I tried to tell her Rains knew she could fix it, it just might take a little bit. Peggy said she'd keep an eye on her."

Bucky nodded. "Thanks." He hated that they had to lie to her, even though he got it. Once they got this figured out, he'd make sure to tell her the truth.

They talked a little while longer before Rains came back in. She had a sleeping potion she wanted him to take—she and Phillips had some ideas, but they weren't going to be easy and she wanted him well-rested before they tried them. Though Bucky told her he would sleep alright without the potion, she would take no argument and stood there until he drank it. Steve was allowed to stay but only under the condition that he lie down on the other bed and get some sleep as well. If she came back in here and found him sitting up worrying, she would hold him down and force-feed him the sleeping potion, and Bucky kind of wanted to see that but he fell asleep before Steve could respond.

* * *

Chester Phillips sighed deeply to himself, leaning back against the door of the private room off the infirmary. He was listening as Gwyneth Rains checked over the Barnes boy—except he wasn't a boy anymore, was he? Seventeen years old and with his Sergeant's stripes—Barnes was a man now. After everything he'd fought his way through, he was more so than a lot of young men his age. When he'd come of age, Phillips hadn't hesitated a moment in granting the official promotion.

Seventeen was still so young, though. And even though his students accused him in whispers of being able to read minds, he had never used Legilimancy on a student before, and it turned his stomach a little to do it now. And though Barnes was putting a brave face on it, Phillips could tell the prospect scared him.

Rogers was scared too, though he was less concerned about hiding it. Phillips huffed an exasperated snort, watching him watch Rains and Barnes. Those two were something else. The way they looked out for each other, he remembered being surprised during their first year when he found out they weren't related. Still, if he was going to have to send children off to war, Rogers and Barnes was where he was putting his money. Rogers had exceeded all the expectations Phillips knew Erskine had had, and had, quite frankly, blown Phillips himself out of the water. Add in Rogers' unending quest for justice and the pig-headed tenacity they both had, and it wouldn't have surprised Phillips overly much if the two of them went out and won the war on their own one of these days.

He shook his head grimly. Good as they were, they shouldn't have to be out there in the first place. A year and a half on, he still hated the Ministry's guts for making the decision, and still lost sleep over what it had cost. The name of every one of his students who had died since this started was seared into his brain forever. And that was why he was about to go digging around inside Barnes' head. Because someone, one of his own people, was out there hurting his boys. And they were going to stop it.

Rains was explaining to Barnes now why they were choosing this route—usually when a memory was modified, a new one was laid down on top of it. It had a layering effect, and double-stacked memories were easy enough to find. Not any easier to unlock, but easy to find. Whoever had done this to Barnes hadn't added anything in to cover it up, which, Phillips grudgingly admitted, was smarter. It was a single layered memory, just like all the other ones in his head. Never mind a needle in a haystack, it was more like a needle in a pile of needles.

Even if they found it, there was no guarantee of getting it unlocked. At least, not any time soon. A memory could stay hidden forever if no one was looking for it, but if someone was going after it, working at it to heal it, eventually, it would always be unlocked. The problem was how long it would take to do it. Days, weeks, months sometimes. Years, too. There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, by trying some more aggressive methods than the Healers at St. Mungo's preferred to use, they could at least knock out the 'years' category.

Barnes was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Phillips pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to, son," Phillips told him, giving him one last chance to back down. Yes, he wanted to catch this spy. But delving into someone's mind was a personal, painful process, and more than he could rightfully ask of a seventeen-year-old. He could hardly hold it against him if Barnes said no.

"Yes, we do," Barnes replied, sitting up a little straighter.

Phillips nodded, pride in his student tugging up one corner of his mouth into the smallest of smiles. He settled back in his chair and began.

He felt Barnes recoil instantly, a natural reaction to someone entering your mind. For a moment, Phillips felt the pressure of Barnes pushing back at him and fighting to force him out, another natural reaction, but then he felt him start to withdraw, following the instructions they had given him. If Barnes resisted, tried to shut him out, Phillips might miss something, and this whole torturous endeavor would be for nothing.

Phillips set to his work as fast as he could, not wanting to drag this out any longer than necessary. He summoned memories and thoughts in a whirlwind, starting with those closest to the surface. He couldn't help but see some of the contents, but he looked at as little as he could. Not so much for Barnes' privacy—you couldn't be delicate in a time like this—but because the contents weren't what he was after. Not yet. This missing memory, it was like a page torn out of a book. It had been ripped out of where it belonged, and the edges would be rough and jagged. He had to look at them all to see if the edges were torn, but he didn't have to look too closely until then.

It was hard to keep track of time inside someone else's head. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, and there were moments where it felt like he'd been in here for all seventeen years of Barnes' life. It was a good life, most of it. Not always easy, but good, and Phillips was glad that there was that for him to fall back on when it got dark. And it was starting to get dark.

He'd come to the corner of Barnes' mind that had a wall around it. He thought he knew what to expect inside—Phillips didn't know a soldier alive who didn't have a wall like this. Barnes lashed out again when Phillips reached it, then drew back, then lashed out and drew back again. Phillips paused, not retreating but not advancing, giving him time. If Barnes kept fighting, he would pull back, call it a day.

Somewhere outside of Barnes' head, Phillips could hear him inhaling deeply, trying to calm the hitching in his breath. "Go ahead, Sir," he heard him say, his voice small but resolute. "I can do this."

Phillips moved forward slowly and Barnes withdrew again. There inside his head with him, Phillips could almost see him sinking to his knees and curling into a ball, drawing himself in tight to keep from interfering. "Steady on, son," he heard himself whisper.

It was dark on the other side of the wall. A lot of the memories in here had jagged edges—they belonged somewhere else, but Barnes didn't want them, had torn them out himself so he could lock them away. It was a good place for another torn memory to hide, but Phillips was going to have to start looking more carefully now.

There was a lot of pain here. A lot of death. Arthur Collins, the first Hogwarts student to die on a mission. Barnes had knelt over his dead body and closed his eyes. A man named Albert, the gut-wrenching warmth of his blood spattering across Barnes' cheek. A nameless Dutch boy, vanishing into the dark. Scores of others—soldiers on a hill, men and boys crying in cages. Rogers's mother, dying sick and slow, and Phillips felt the tidal wave of sorrow in his gut as sharply as Barnes had.

More pain, more fear. James Morita, motionless and unconscious after a bad curse. Montgomery Falsworth, stabbed through the leg and bleeding out in a cave. Timothy Dugan, hand blackened and ashy and crying in pain. Gabriel Jones, screaming into the floor and writhing in the grip of the _Cruciatus_ curse. Jacques Dernier coughing up blood. Peggy Carter pale and unmoving on a hospital bed, her insides torn apart by bullet fragments. And memory after memory after memory of Steve Rogers, broken and bloody and cursed and half dead.

Underneath the fear, there was a nameless, shrieking terror. Phillips had to take a breath and steel himself before going in there. It was dark and disjointed, and for a moment, he dared to hope he'd found what he was looking for. But the chaos didn't come from something being out of place—it came from the broken, pain-filled haze that Barnes remembered this through.

Arnim Zola. Phillips had known the name, known the face for many years. And Phillips had been an Auror for decades and fought in two world wars—he had seen the most depraved sides of men and of wizards, but in this moment, through Barnes' eyes, he had never seen anything as terrifying as the little Hydra scientist.

He had known it had been awful. He had read the reports. Listened to the survivors. Hell, he'd been in places like that himself in the course of his job, seen first-hand the results of some of Hydra's work. But, dear Lord. Dear. _Lord_. The things Arnim Zola had done to that boy. And he _had_ been just a boy then, only fifteen. God help him.

Phillips had to force down the urge to pull back at what he saw. But he caught himself, stood firm. Because if James Barnes could suffer through that, could fight his way through and come out the other side of it alive, never mind willing to rejoin the fight, then the least Chester Phillips could do was look at it. So he did. He looked. It tore him to pieces but he looked, and there, tucked away between the atrocities, there it was. A memory ripped and torn on the edges, nothing but noise and bursts of light and shadow. Something covered up and locked and sealed, and he couldn't open it, not from in here, but he knew where it was now.

He found it.

* * *

Steve hadn't really known what to expect when he'd heard that Phillips was going to read Bucky's mind, but so far it was actually turning out to be kind of boring. They were just sitting there, Phillips in his chair and Bucky cross-legged on the bed, looking into each other's eyes like this was the world's weirdest staring contest.

"How long does this usually take?" he asked Nurse Rains quietly after half an hour.

She smiled at him. "The human mind is a complicated place, love," she told him. "There's an awful lot to look through. It depends how deep this memory's buried, of course, but it'll be some time yet, I'd think."

Every now and then, one of them would twitch a little, but that was the extent of their movement. They both remained still, a look of concentration on Phillips' face and one of wide-eyed expressionlessness on Bucky's.

At the start of the third hour, something happened. Phillips flinched and Bucky gasped, a pained grimace twitching up one side of his face. His shoulders shook slightly as his breath hitched several times, growing trepidation twisting his features. Steve shot a worried look at Rains, and she was watching the two of them intently, but making no move to intervene. Maybe this was supposed to happen?

"Go ahead, Sir," Bucky said quietly, startling them both. His face was equal parts afraid and determined. "I can do this."

"Steady on, son," Phillips whispered, and Steve just caught himself before his jaw dropped open. There was a tender sort of sorrowfulness in his voice that Steve wouldn't have thought him capable of. What the hell was going on in there?

He looked to Rains for an answer, but she just shook her head. "This is where it's going to get tricky," she said softly.

Bucky and Phillips were back to staring at each other again, but it was different this time. Phillips' concentration looked more forceful, and Bucky's face was no longer expressionless, but held a look of resigned acceptance. Steve sat forward in his chair, waves of nerves starting to writhe in his stomach.

It was just another minute or two later that Bucky started to cry. His gaze remained locked on Phillips', tired and sad, and his breathing stayed steady and calm, but tears were welling up in his eyes and spilling silently down his cheeks. Steve immediately moved forward, but Rains grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. "No, love," she said. "You mustn't touch them." Her voice was not entirely steady, and her eyes did not leave the two of them to meet Steve's, but she took his hand in both of hers and held it tight. "I'm sorry."

Steve swallowed and nodded and sat back, not pulling his hand away from hers. It was awful, sitting there and watching Bucky cry and not doing anything about it. What the hell was Phillips doing in there?! Commanding officer or not, if he hurt Bucky while he was in there, so help him…

With a sudden gasp and burst of movement that felt deafening after sitting in near silence for so long, Bucky shuddered and flailed his arms and threw himself backwards on the mattress and Phillips shoved his chair back with a screech of metal legs on stone, flying to his feet and spinning and marching to the opposite corner, a hand pressed to the side of his head.

Steve and Rains both leapt up, she, following Phillips, and Steve reaching out for Bucky and grabbing him before he fell off the side of the bed. He sat down on the mattress and tugged Bucky against him, and Bucky choked and gasped and, with a stuttering sob, began to cry in earnest, burying his face in Steve's shoulder and clenching his fists in his shirt like he had nothing else to hold on to.

"It's okay, Buck, it's okay," Steve whispered, rocking him back and forth and cradling one hand up over his head. "Ssh, ssh, it's okay. I've got you. I've got you, it's okay." He didn't know what else to say, so he just kept repeating the same assurances over and over.

Bucky's tears were violent but brief, slowing after only a couple of minutes, though it took him another one to stop shaking, and another one after that before he lifted his head. "Buck?" Steve asked softly, leaning down a little to catch his eye.

"Yeah," Bucky said, and his voice was only a little shaky, and he sat up away from Steve, though he didn't relinquish his grip on his sleeve. "Wow, that…that _sucked_."

"What happened?" Steve asked, still worried.

Bucky closed his eyes and shook his head. He huffed a breath and opened his eyes and shook his head again. Whatever had happened, he had no idea how to say it. "I'm okay," he said. He wiped at his eyes with one hand, and he did really seem like he was finding his feet again.

"Did he hurt you?" Steve asked.

There was a fond, grateful smile in his voice when Bucky answered. "No." He wiped his nose and then his eyes again, and though he looked drained and wrung out, he did seem okay now. "He just…" He shook his head. "There's all that stuff you don't wanna think about, and he had to dig through it all. I just had to…put it all back."

Steve nodded. He knew what kind of stuff Bucky didn't like to think about. "I'm sorry," he said.

Bucky nodded. His eyes travelled to somewhere over Steve's shoulders. "Looks like it sucked for him too," he said.

Steve turned his head to follow Bucky's gaze. Phillips was in the corner over by the door, his back still to them, but his shoulders were tight with tension and the way he was breathing told Steve he may not be crying like Bucky had, but he clearly had to pull himself back together. A wave of nausea churned in Steve's gut and he found his own breath catching in his throat. He _thought_ he knew what kind of stuff Bucky didn't like to think about, but what the hell was in there that could make Phillips react like that?!

Arms were moving around his shoulders, and this time it was Bucky hugging Steve. "I'm really okay, Stevie," Bucky assured him, and this was stupid because Bucky was the one who'd just relived all his trauma, he shouldn't be comforting Steve, but Steve leaned into the hug for just a minute until he got his breathing back under control.

"Are you sure?" he asked, looking Bucky over.

"I'm sure," Bucky said with a small smile. He nodded over at Phillips. "It's nothing I haven't told you about," he said, and Steve supposed that was meant to be comforting, that there weren't any _new_ horrors lurking in his head. "I'm pretty good at locking it down by now," he added. "I'm really alright."

"Okay," Steve said, and he straightened up but he stayed on the bed, shoulder still pressed against Bucky's. Phillips and Rains came back over, and he looked like his normal self again. "You alright, Barnes?" he asked gruffly.

Bucky nodded. "Yes, Sir."

Phillips nodded back. "Well done, son. Well done." He rested a hand briefly on Bucky's shoulder. "We found it."

"You did?" Bucky asked hopefully. He frowned. "I don't remember."

"It's not unlocked," Phillips told him. "We just know where it is now. I've marked it so we can find it without going through all this again before the next step."

"What is the next step?" Bucky asked.

"Sleep," Nurse Rains replied. "For both of you," she clarified, shooting a stern look at Phillips.

"No, I can—" Bucky began.

"Buck, you need some rest," Steve cut in softly. He'd been awake for four hours, but he looked like he hadn't slept for a week.

"You do," Rains confirmed. She smiled warmly. "The memory'll keep, love, and the next step's not as hard as this one, but it's not easy either. I'll not have you wear yourself to the bone."

Bucky sagged against Steve a little bit and nodded in concession, though he still looked like he wanted to argue a little. "Okay," he agreed. He also looked like if they left him alone for a couple minutes, he'd fall asleep whether he wanted to or not.

Phillips nodded at him. "We'll get there," he told him, then pulled Rains aside, talking with her quietly as they left the room.

Steve moved to let Bucky lie down, and though he looked exhausted, there was a familiar uncertainty in his eyes as he shifted against the pillows. "You don't want to go to sleep, do you?" Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head. "It's all…" He gestured at the side of his head. "It's all right there. So close to the surface. I don't know…" He yawned. He may not want to sleep, but his body wasn't going to give him much choice in the matter.

Steve moved his chair over so it was right next to the bed and wrapped a hand around Bucky's forearm. "What can I do?"

Bucky looked up at him, and his cheeks were a little pink. "Don't leave?" he asked softly.

Steve smiled and settled down more comfortably in his chair, squeezing Bucky's arm warmly. "Not going anywhere, pal."

Bucky gave him a small, grateful smile, and after a minute, allowed his eyes to shut. Steve stayed where he was, his hand secure around Bucky's arm. Bucky slept for several hours, through lunch and into mid-afternoon, and though he didn't scream or call out, he would twitch and whimper from time to time, and Steve would grip his arm tighter or reach up and pat his shoulder and he would still. He left his hand resting on Bucky's arm, and he smiled when Bucky rolled a little in his sleep and reached over with his other hand, grabbing Steve's sleeve and tugging it closer against him. It had been a long time since Bucky had slept with a teddy bear, but that's how he was holding on to Steve's arm now. Steve didn't mind.

He looked a lot better when he woke up, though there were still tired circles under his eyes. He insisted that he felt better too.

"Really, Steve," he said as he worked his way through his late lunch. "I'm fine. I was really shook up, but everything's back where it goes now. Stop looking at me like that."

After he'd eaten, Rains came in and looked him over and decided he was fit to go on with the next step if he wanted to.

"Hell, yes, I want to. I mean, uh, yes, ma'am," Bucky said, cheeks going a little red.

Rains smirked a little and didn't reply, leaving to get Phillips.

"Alright," Phillips said. He looked like he was back to normal too. Maybe a little grumpier than usual, like he was making up for showing emotion this morning. "You ready for this?"

"Yes, Sir," Bucky replied. He was sitting up on the bed again and Rains and Phillips were both in chairs in front of him. "Um," he asked, his eyes darting between them. "What are you going to do?"

"This is a series of spells designed to unlock your memory," Rains told him. "We've got to pull the memory back up to the surface, then we'll start chipping away at the magic keeping it sealed."

"Chipping?" Steve asked from where he was sitting on the side. That didn't sound like a word you wanted to use around the inside of somebody's head.

"Yes," Phillips said. "Chipping. It's finicky work—don't interrupt once we get going," he told him, pointing a warning finger at Steve.

"Yes, Sir," Steve said. He swallowed. "It's not gonna hurt him, is it?"

"If done improperly, it could," Rains allowed. She turned to face Bucky, who had swallowed nervously at this declaration. "We'll stop before we get that far," she promised. She laid a hand on top of his. "It'll be alright."

Bucky nodded at her, then again at Steve. "Okay," he said, turning back to the two of them. "I'm ready."

They both raised their wands and started muttering spells, and Bucky stiffened and shuddered like someone had just poured ice water down his back. His mouth dropped part of the way open and his eyes rolled back in his head, but he stayed upright. He looked eerily similar to the way he had when Steve found him in Zola's lab, and Steve swallowed hard and scooted his chair a little bit further away so he wouldn't be tempted to reach out and grab him.

Steve had thought the hours sitting there watching Bucky and Phillips stare at each other were nerve-wracking, but they were a piece of cake compared to this. Phillips and Rains kept up their muttering, staring at Bucky's head like they could see through it and occasionally saying things like, "Careful, you're losing the edge of it," or, "If I hold this up, can you get underneath it?" Bucky would twitch sporadically, and his mouth would move like he was trying to say something, but no words came out. His eyes remained rolled towards the back of his head, eyelids fluttering unevenly. He looked like he was slipping away, back into that nothingness he'd floated in for so long after Steve had brought him back from Italy, and Steve couldn't believe he was actually letting someone do this to him. It had _better_ be as quick for him to snap back from this as it had been from Phillips digging through his head.

Though it seemed to drag on for an agonizing eternity, less than an hour had passed when Phillips and Rains went quiet and dropped their wands. Bucky's eyes rolled the rest of the way up into his head and he collapsed back onto the mattress with a soft thump.

"Bucky!" Steve exclaimed, darting forward but catching himself as he reached the bed, just in case they weren't done yet.

"That's all," Phillips said. "He's fine."

"He'll come 'round in just a minute," Rains added. She nodded and Steve dropped onto the bed next to Bucky, brushing his hair back out of his face and looking him over as if he could see any outward sign of whatever they'd done in there.

"He's okay?" he pressed.

"He is," Rains replied patiently.

Steve nodded, looking down at Bucky then back up. "Did it work?"

"Why don't we ask him?" Phillips said, nodding down at Bucky.

"Bucky!" Steve said, looking down to where Bucky was blinking in confusion. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, looking around. Realization dawned and he nodded again more certainly. "Yeah, I'm fine." He looked up at Rains and Phillips. "Did it work?"

"Can you see it?" Rains asked.

Bucky closed his eyes. "There's something there, it…whoa, that's weird."

"What?" Steve asked anxiously.

Bucky opened his eyes. "I can see it, but I can't _see_ it. Like, I know it's there, but it's just like a…smudgy spot on a piece of paper where somebody erased everything. It's like I remember the smudge, but I…I still can't see what it was before it got erased."

Phillips nodded, as if he'd expected nothing else. "That's what we thought it would do."

"So, does that mean it worked or not?" Steve asked.

Phillips frowned, and Steve supposed his tone could have been a little more polite, but Rains smiled. "It worked as well as we can manage. The warding around the memory is broken—it's no longer magically sealed. His brain still has to unlock it on its own, though, and that may take some time."

"How much time?" Bucky asked.

Phillips and Rains looked at each other and shrugged. "It's hard to say," Rains told him. "Hopefully no more than a few weeks."

"A few weeks?!" Bucky protested. "No way! There's got to be something else you can do!"

"There is something else we can do," Rains said calmly. "But it's dangerous and we're not going to do it."

"No, it's fine, I can—" Bucky began.

"No," Phillips said firmly, and that was a voice you didn't argue with. His eyes softened just a little. "If we push any harder, we're going to break something we can't fix. We're not doing that."

"Yes, Sir," Bucky said quietly.

Rains smiled and leaned down, placing a hand on his shoulder. "The work of it's over now, and I'm afraid the hard part is the waiting. But it'll come. In the meantime, the best you can do is go on with your daily life and let your brain sort itself out. When you're feeling up to walking, you're clear to go," she said, nodding at the door. "Dinner and early to bed, and you'll be just fine in the morning."

Bucky nodded.

"And until this comes back," Phillips told him. "Remember, the story hasn't changed. I wasn't kidding when I said this spy would try to kill you if he knew what we were up to."

"Yes, Sir," Bucky said again.

Steve had wondered what Rains had meant about Bucky feeling up to walking again, but the spell had left him dizzy and kind of shaky, and even after he made it to his feet, Steve had to put an arm around his shoulder to keep him steady.

"Tell you what," Steve said. "I know Rains said you need to eat, but how about I take you down to our room instead of the dining hall, then I'll go and get some food for you?"

"Yeah, okay," Bucky said.

"I'm sorry it didn't work like you thought it would," Steve said, reading the disappointment on Bucky's face.

"Yeah," Bucky sighed. "I kinda thought after all that it would just be right there."

"Was it really that bad?" Steve wondered. "It looked awful."

"The first part was," Bucky agreed. He furrowed his eyebrows thoughtfully. "I don't really remember the second part. Just sort of a…general weirdness. But I'll be fine," he said, and though Steve was still worried, Bucky sounded like he was convinced of that. "And I'm gonna get it, Steve. This weasel may think he's safe for now, but I'm gonna get this."

* * *

Bucky hadn't been lying when he'd told Steve he was alright, but the day's fiddling around inside his head had worn him out. He'd barely been able to stay awake long enough for Steve to bring dinner back to him, and he was pretty sure he fell asleep in the shower for a little bit before getting in bed. He'd been too tired for any of those unpleasant memories Phillips had stirred up to bother him while he slept, and when he got up in the morning, everything was back where it should have been in his head and he felt pretty good.

When he got in to breakfast, Becky rushed over and flung her arms around his middle, making him grunt as she knocked the air out of his lungs. "Jay, you're okay!"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he croaked. He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "You weren't worried about me, were you?"

She drew back and looked up at him. " 'course I was," she said seriously. "Did it hurt?"

"No," he told her truthfully, even though he knew she thought something else had happened. "It was…weird, but it didn't hurt."

"Okay, well, good." She sighed. "You gotta be more careful, Jay."

"I am careful," he told her. "Bad guys are sneaky sometimes. But, hey, you don't need to worry about me, you know? Steve takes good care of me." This had the desired effect of diverting Becky's attention somewhat as well as making Steve blush.

They finished breakfast, and though he would have liked to enjoy his free period, there was a weekend's worth of homework that, extension or not, needed working on. He did take a little bit of time to find Vicki, though, and assure her he was alright.

His teachers were always pretty understanding as far as missions and extensions went, but they seemed a little more gracious about it today, assuring him that he could take a little more time and some of them shooting him the occasional concerned look. Apparently the cover story about what was supposed to have happened to him in the castle had gotten around. "Hey, Steve," he said in Charms. "Exactly what kind of stuff was I supposed to be transfiguring into this weekend?"

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, looking up from his project.

"I mean the way the teachers keep looking at me. I'm guessing it had to be worse than some kind of animal or something."

"Oh." Steve considered. "I don't know exactly. Jim said it wouldn't have been natural things, but, like, hybrid monsters and crap."

"Oh, that's nice," Bucky said. "Real classy guy, Schmidt." No wonder the teachers kept looking at him like that. He felt a little bad about brushing off Becky's worry. He hadn't realized she'd been hearing stuff like _that_. Still, he was fine, and he'd be able to tell her the truth before too long.

In Potions that afternoon, Kendall was begrudging about the extension, but he seemed content enough to collect the essay from everyone else, warning Bucky and Steve and Jim that they only had two more days for it. Bucky wasn't really surprised—this was one class he had not expected any grace in. Although…

"Is it weird that Kendall kind of looks like he's worried about me too?" Bucky asked Steve. To say he looked concerned was probably stretching the definition of the word, but this would be the first time since arriving at Hogwarts that Kendall had shown anything resembling it.

"He kinda does," Steve agreed. "That is weird."

"I dunno," Jim said. "He's probably just worried you might turn into a demon-lizard or something and try to eat him."

That was a fair point. Bucky wondered if the other teachers had been worried about that too, as well as being concerned for his health.

A couple of days passed and everything seemed to be settling again. People stopped looking at Bucky like they were worried about him, and he got all his homework turned in. He didn't seem to be having any luck on the memory front, though. Whenever he didn't need to be thinking about something else, he'd focus his mind on that smudgy little unlocked memory and see if he couldn't see anything. No luck so far, but thinking too hard about it gave him a headache, which freaked Steve out and Nurse Rains said was the kind of thing that was likely to happen and he should stop thinking so hard about it and just let it come.

Although he was desperate to know what was in there, he tried to keep his mind occupied most of the time. They all met together for their weekly Wednesday meeting, and going through some of the stuff they'd brought back from Schmidt's castle was more than enough to divert his attention.

"Man," Dugan said, flipping through a stack of drawings. "Schmidt may have had a stupid tiny castle, but we hit the jackpot with this!"

"We haven't even seen some of these in the field yet," Monty commented. He was leaning over Dugan's shoulder to study the weapons designs he was holding.

"What the hell even _is_ this?" Jim wondered, flipping over a little device he and Jacques were examining.

Gabe said nothing, absorbed in a stack of journals he was translating.

Peggy smiled, looking up from the stack of maps she was sorting through. "I'm glad you boys are having fun. Remember, anything having to do with the Tesseract or Valkyrie…"

"We know, we know, it goes straight to you," Jim said distractedly. "What do you think this button does?" he asked Jacques.

"You're not going to press it and find out," Steve said, shooting a sharp look across the table before returning his attention to the blueprints he was studying.

"You're not going to press it and find out," Jim parroted quietly, and Steve threw his pen across the table without looking up and hit him right between the eyes.

They spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through Schmidt's things and cataloguing them. They found no mention of the Valkyrie, but Bucky did find a stack of notes on the Tesseract with little scribbles and equations along the sides.

"I still can't believe how much stuff this is," Bucky said as he and Steve waited while Peggy locked everything up.

"It _is_ impressive," Peggy replied. "And until we catch the spy, we're the only ones who can sort it, so I'd expect to be in here more than just Wednesday afternoons."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Bucky sighed. "I really have been trying to get this memory back, I just…"

"No, sorry, I wasn't blaming you," Peggy said, putting a reassuring hand on his arm. "Nurse Rains _did_ say it would take a little while," she reminded him. "It's not even been a week yet."

"I know," Bucky sighed. "I just feel like I'm so _close_. It'd be nice to have this guy out of the way."

"And he will be, Buck," Steve assured him.

"Hey, what happens when we catch him?" Bucky wondered.

"Azkaban, definitely," Peggy said firmly. "Depending on how much he knows, the S.S.R. could hang on to him for a while, interrogate him. We know what he's done to _us_, but who knows how long he's been operating, and what else he's done. He may even end up getting handed over to the Dementors."

"Well, I want a piece of him before they do that," Bucky declared. Normally, the thought of someone being given to the Dementors—even if it was someone from Hydra—made him a little queasy. Bucky knew what real despair felt like, and the idea of those monsters just draining the happiness out of a person…He shuddered. The idea of this spy getting that treatment didn't bother him, though. The pain he'd caused and the people who'd died because he kept screwing them over…civilians they hadn't been able to save, Arthur, Michael and Roddy and Stewart from the 49th, that girl Damaris and the old couple from Zurich…The many times the Howlies had come close to biting it because of him…What had happened to Steve in Salzburg (that one still felt like a raw nerve)… All the guys from the 89th and 107th they'd lost…No. Bucky had no problem with this guy having every little bit of joy sucked out of his life.

They caught up with Jim and Gabe on their way to dinner. "You know," Jim said, casting an eye around to make sure the corridor was deserted. "I've been wondering. If Phillips can read minds and all, why didn't he just do that as soon as he knew there was a spy around?"

Bucky had initially wondered that too—especially after learning how painful it would be having Phillips dig around in his head, but Rains and Phillips had explained that to him and Steve before they got started.

"The S.S.R. trains all its intelligence people in Occlumency," Peggy explained.

"Fair enough," Gabe said. "But if he told them to sit down and let him check them out for security reasons…"

"No," Peggy said, shaking her head. "A good enough Occlumens can hide something without making it look like anything's hidden. And whoever this is, they'd have to be good."

"Would've made my life easier if it worked that way," Bucky put in, and they chuckled, though Steve shot him one of those concerned looks again.

They went to dinner, and then Bucky spent his evening focusing first on Vicki Marlowe and how absolutely gorgeous that red hair of hers looked in the sunset, then on studying for his upcoming exams. When he ran out of homework and his brain kept wanting him to think about his missing memory, he focused on how far across the common room he had to be before he couldn't hit Steve with a spitball anymore. Which, given his sniper abilities, turned out to be pretty darn far. He was almost in the hallway. Steve was not as impressed with that as he was.

He let up right before Steve got mad enough to throw something at him, scooping up his stuff and heading back down the hall toward his room, and he found himself walking alongside Donovan. "Hey," Bucky wondered. "What are you going to do when you get out of here?" Donovan was about to graduate, and Bucky knew Colin was already training to take over the 107th, but he didn't know if Donovan planned to continue the fight or step back. Former student soldiers who had already graduated had done both, with a fairly even split.

"I'm not sure," Donovan said. "I'd like to go on to Healer training, but I hear they're desperate for field medics in the wizard units on the ground in Germany. I'm still thinking it over."

Bucky clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, we'll sure miss you around here."

Donovan smiled. "Yeah. It's gonna be weird, not fighting with this team. A year and a half we've been together, most of us." He gave Bucky a friendly nudge with his elbow. "And you and me, right from the beginning, hey? Who'd have thought we'd be here one day?"

Bucky chuckled in agreement. He and Donovan had been assigned to the 107th on their first day. They'd both survived those early missions and Azzano, and here they both were, part of the special forces tasked with taking out Hydra. "We sure have come a long way."

The next day, he went on with more classes, helping Becky with her homework at lunch time and more sorting of their haul from Schmidt's castle after school. After dinner, he did some sparring with Gabe down in the training area. The two of them were still there when Steve came in from riding his bike around like he sometimes did and they helped him fiddle around with the engine for a while to see if they could figure out what was making that rattling noise. Then more homework and off to bed again, and things were kind of feeling like they were normal. Bucky supposed that was good. Rains said to just do the normal life thing and let the memory come back on its own. So, he was trying.

Friday afternoon, their last class of the day and the last class before exams next week was Potions. It was a double period, and it was hot and it was right after lunch and Kendall was just never able to hold your attention the way Erskine could. That nasal voice of his was droning like some kind of insect and Bucky was fighting to stay awake. He _was_ trying to listen, he really was. Sure, this was important stuff to know, and if nothing else, missing steps in Potions could lead to explosions and other unpleasant things. So he was awake. Propping his eyes open with his fingers and forcing his brain to repeat every word that Kendall was saying so that he could make sure he got it, but he was awake. Then Kendall turned back to his desk to pick something up, turned back to face them and sniffed and pushed his glasses up his nose like he did about fifteen times every class period, and something exploded in Bucky's brain.

Glass shattered at his feet as his arm jerked and knocked a tray of test tubes off the side of his desk, and every eye in the room snapped to fix on him. Bucky failed to notice entirely.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Kendall snapped.

Bucky's hand flew up to cover his mouth and he swallowed convulsively, shoving his stool away from the table. "Infirmary," he managed to gasp. "I think I need—"

Kendall backed up a couple of steps and looked at him in disgust. "Go," he said, waving at the door, and Bucky was already bolting from the room.

He ran down the corridor and rounded the corner then stopped, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. He wasn't sick, but he hadn't needed to fake the nausea surging in his stomach. If he'd stayed in there one more second, had to look in those eyes one more time or hear that voice say one more word…He closed his eyes and his stomach heaved and he forced down the bile rising in his throat. Kendall. God help him, it was Kendall.

Memory exploded into the front of his brain, whiting out the corridor he was standing in and dropping him back into that underground hallway. Jacques had been on the radio, arguing with Jim over whether or not some potions he had found were worth bringing back. Steve cut in to tell him to just bring it anyway. Bucky moved out of the room he had finished with, which looked like a kitchen that hadn't been cleaned any time this century, nodded at Gabe further down the hall, and rounded a corner. He stepped into what was clearly a lab—bloody surgical equipment, vials of potions, and a nauseatingly familiar-looking metal gurney. He'd seen several labs that Hydra used for human experiments since he'd first been introduced to one, and they never failed to make something small and frightened deep down in his soul whimper in terror.

That fear was quickly engulfed by surprise as he stepped fully into the room and found someone was already in it. "Professor Kendall?" he asked. Why in the hell was his Potions teacher here?

Kendall spun around, dropping a sheaf of papers clutched in his fist, looking equally as surprised as Bucky. He shoved his glasses back up his nose like he always did in class as several emotions flitted across his face in rapid succession—fear, anger, uncertainty, decision. Warning bells were going off in Bucky's head—something about this was clearly wrong—and he started backing away, raising his wand. Kendall's wand was already up, though.

"_Obliviate_!"

A rush of white noise. Images scrolling backwards, sinking out of sight. Heavy gray fog rolling in. Nothing.

"Bucky?"

"Ga-ah!" Bucky lashed out at whoever was grabbing him, forgetting he was standing against the wall until his flailing arms smacked into it.

"Bucky!" the voice said again, and the hands on his shoulders got tighter, and, wait a minute, he knew that voice.

"Steve," he breathed, and Steve was there, and he was back at Hogwarts and he'd run out of Potions class and Steve was holding on to him like he was afraid he was going to fall over.

"Bucky, are you okay?" Steve asked, worry etched in every line of his face.

"I'm fine," Bucky told him, still trying to catch his breath. "Kendall. Steve, it's Kendall."

"Yeah, Kendall said I could come after you. Look, we need to get you to the infirmary—"

"No!" Bucky snapped, cutting Steve off. He grabbed his sleeve and looked him squarely in the eyes, steady as he could muster. "It was Kendall. In Romania. I remember."

Steve's jaw dropped. Bucky could almost see the train jumping tracks inside his head. "You remember?" he whispered.

"I remember," Bucky said again. "Steve, he's the spy."

* * *

_The boys may know who the spy is now, but there's still a lot to unravel. See you Monday!_


	64. Confessions Of A Double Agent

_The spy's web is starting to unravel. Time now to see if we can get it untangled the rest of the way,  
_

* * *

If it hadn't been such a serious moment, it would have been kind of funny watching Steve gaping like a fish as he tried to wrap his head around what Bucky had just told him. "Kendall's the spy?" he finally said.

Bucky nodded. "It just came to me. When he did that thing with his glasses. He did it then, too, right before he cursed me."

Steve nodded, his surprise replaced by intense focus. "Okay," he said. "Okay." He looked back up at Bucky. "We need to get you to the infirmary."

"No, Steve, I'm not sick, I—" Bucky protested. They needed to find Phillips and they needed to find him now.

"I know," Steve interrupted. "But Kendall thinks you are. We need to get you there in case he decides to check on you. Oh, man, no wonder he's been looking at you funny this week!" he said, realization flashing across his face. "He didn't care that you might have been hurt, he was worried you would remember him."

Bucky growled. "I should've known something was weird about that." It seemed so obvious in hindsight.

"Come on," Steve said, grabbing his arm and hurrying towards the stairs. He stopped halfway up. "Wait. Maybe you'd be safer in Phillips' office."

Bucky was about to ask what he meant, but, oh, yeah, that's right, Kendall might still try to kill him if he suspected anything. Phillips' office probably _was_ safer, but… "Yeah, maybe, but we can't get into Phillips' office. He's in class. You're right, let's go to the infirmary. Rains knows what's going on—she can get Phillips without looking too fishy."

"Yeah, you're right," Steve agreed, and then he was yanking Bucky up the stairs again.

Bucky stumbled along after him. "Slow down some, would you?" Yeah, he got that Steve was worried about him, but unless Kendall was following them up the stairs, it seemed unlikely he was going to try to kill him right this second. Bucky had no desire to get assassinated, but he didn't want to trip and slam face-first into the stairs either.

They burst into the infirmary, startling Nurse Rains and the little First-Year she was un-hexing, but after they shuffled off to the side and explained everything to her, solemn intensity quickly replaced her irritation.

"You're sure about this?" she asked.

"Yes, Ma'am," Bucky replied. Now that the memory was back, he didn't think it was ever going to stop playing.

She nodded at the room he'd spent the weekend in. "In there," she told them. They went in and sat down, hearing her place some sort of locking charm on the door before she moved away.

"Wow," Steve breathed, sinking down to sit on the bed. "Professor Kendall."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed, sitting next to him. He didn't really know who he'd been expecting the spy to be, but it still seemed surprising. Although… "No wonder he seems to hate us so much. I always just thought he didn't like kids."

Steve looked at him, then burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, that's, that's not funny."

Bucky smiled back. "It's a little funny."

"I wonder if anybody in Hydra likes kids?" Steve mused. "He may have been the best they had."

"How long do you think he's been Hydra?" Bucky wondered. "You think they turned him, or he's been theirs the whole time?"

"I don't know how long he was in the S.S.R. before he was here," Steve said. "I mean, he wasn't here long before stuff started going wrong."

Phillips burst into the room then, an out-of-breath Rains behind him. "With me," he barked, grabbing Bucky's arm and practically yanking him off the bed.

"Sir—" Bucky started, Steve hurrying along behind them.

"No talking!" Phillips ordered, and they hurried along quietly behind him, leaving Nurse Rains and a very wide-eyed First-Year who was still furry on one side of her face staring after them.

Phillips led them to his office, locking the door with several spells behind them. "I need to see it," he told Bucky, escorting him past the desk and chairs to the Pensieve in the far corner.

"Yes, Sir," Bucky nodded.

Phillips touched his wand to the side of Bucky's head, pulling away a wispy strand of memory that he directed to the Pensieve. At first, it appeared to sink into the watery contents of the bowl, then the liquid lit up with a flash of light and Bucky's memory started playing across the surface of it like a tiny movie screen.

It played out just as it had in Bucky's head: the argument on the radio, nodding at Gabe, walking into the lab. Kendall at the desk in the corner. The split-second of surprise on his face before his wand came up. Everything fading to black.

The expression on Steve's face was hard to decipher, but Phillips' face was scarier than Bucky had ever seen it. He wouldn't have been surprised if flames started shooting out of his ears. "That two-faced son of a—" One of the glasses on his desk behind them shattered and exploded, making both Steve and Bucky jump, though Phillips did not seem to notice.

Phillips whirled to face him. "Have you told anyone but Rogers about this?" he demanded.

"No, Sir," Bucky replied. "Just Nurse Rains."

Phillips waved that away. "Gwyneth can take care of herself. We'll have to act quickly, though. Once he knows we're on to him…"

"What do you want us to do?" Bucky asked.

"Stay here," Phillips responded.

"What?! No, Sir, we can—" Steve protested.

"No!" Phillips barked. "You two will be in more danger than anyone else in this castle once this blows up. He's not going to go quietly."

"We've been in dangerous fights before, Sir," Bucky pointed out.

Phillips almost smiled at that. "Yes, you have. But not this one."

"Sir—"

"No. I'm a Colonel. You're a Sergeant. That means you have to do what I tell you, and I'm telling you to stay here. You too, Captain," he added when Steve opened his mouth to argue some more. He drew in a deep breath. "You boys will have a piece of this before it's over, I promise you that, but not now. I'm not letting this traitor touch anyone else. Stay here."

Bucky suddenly understood. As their commanding officer, he had the right to tell them to stay here, but as their teacher, he had the duty to protect them. For all his grumbling, Bucky knew Phillips took the safety of his students incredibly seriously. And his students had been hurt and some had even been killed because of what Kendall had done. Phillips wasn't going to let it happen again. Bucky and Steve may have had parts to play, but this was his fight.

"Yes, Sir," Bucky said quietly. A quick glance at Steve told him Steve got it too.

"Be careful, Sir," Steve said.

A small smile curved up the corner of Phillips' mouth. "I'm not the one who needs to be careful."

* * *

Steve had always thought the dungeon levels of Hogwarts were called that because that's just what you called the lowest levels in a castle, but at least one part of it, all the way down and all the way back, contained a series of small, dark cells. If there hadn't been so many other things to worry about right now, Steve might have wondered why the school had ever needed that.

He still wasn't sure exactly what Phillips had done to catch Kendall. The other teachers had been warned and then some fake emergency staff meeting had been called so they could isolate Kendall and get him away from where he might hurt any students, but that was all Steve knew. Peggy had come to get the two of them about an hour after Phillips had left and brought them down to the dungeon. He'd been right—Kendall had put up a hell of a fight. Phillips was waiting for them in the dungeon, a bloody bandage over one eye. Howard was there too, bloody and pale-faced, and Nurse Rains was cradling her bandaged right hand—she'd been the one to remove the suicide capsule from his mouth, and had gotten bitten badly for her trouble, as well as burned by whatever the hell was inside the thing. They'd passed Perkins and Ellerton going up the stairs as they came down, and though they looked as though they'd been through the ringer, they were moving okay. Their own Head of House, Professor Sparks, had gone to St. Mungo's with Professor Marsh, who had taken a nasty curse to the leg and was in danger of losing it.

Kendall, Steve was pleased to see, didn't look like he'd done much better. He was sitting in the cell, hands chained to the desk in front of him, bloody and dirty and breathing like everything hurt. One leg was extended out in front of him stiffly, clearly of no use to keep him up if he _had_ been standing, and his left arm hung in an awkward way that made Steve wonder if it was dislocated. His eyes were closed as he leaned his head back against the chair, though the lines in his face told Steve he was thinking furiously, worrying, not sleeping. A flickering haze of silver light spanned the length of the dungeon, cutting off the side Kendall was in and keeping him from crossing it, and it let them see in to him but kept him from seeing out.

Peggy was standing next to Steve, arms folded tightly across her chest. "I still can't believe you didn't tell me," she hissed.

"And when was I supposed to do that?" he snapped. They'd had this argument on the way down here. "Phillips locked us in his office."

"You could have come and got me out of class before you went to the infirmary," she countered.

"I'm sorry," he replied, sarcasm dripping from each word. "I guess I was thinking if I did anything to make Kendall suspicious, that he'd come after us and try to kill my best friend."

Peggy turned to him with a growl. "Don't you dare suggest that I don't care about what could have happened to Bucky. I—"

"Guys," Bucky cut them off wearily.

Peggy turned back to look at Kendall and Steve huffed and crossed his own arms. Why were they even fighting about this? They'd caught him, and there was a hell of a bigger picture to look at right now.

Phillips crossed the magical barrier, walking a little more stiffly than normal, and sat down in the chair opposite Kendall's. Kendall opened his eyes and sat up straighter. "Chester," he said coolly.

"Robert," Phillips replied. Silence for a moment. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Kendall smirked. "Took you long enough to catch me."

Phillips didn't rise to the bait. All the anger, the fury that had been on his face earlier was gone. It was replaced by a look of disappointment that, had Steve been the one on the receiving end of that, he would have preferred the anger. "Good people have died because of you. Probably even more than I know about. You're going to tell me everything."

"I am?"

A tiny smile flitted across Phillips' face; the most dangerous smile Steve had ever seen. "You are." The smile got bigger. "Don't play dumb, Robert; you may be a traitor, but you've been working with us for a while now. You know that when people want to know something, they call me."

Kendall's cool expression didn't falter, but he swallowed nervously. "I know," he said. "But, what, you expect to threaten me with your reputation and have me just spill everything?"

"No," Phillips replied. "I just wanted to remind you of it. I expect that I'm going to have to work hard to get the information I want. And I expect this is going to be the first time in a long time that I'm going to enjoy running an interrogation."

Kendall's unease was harder to hide this time. Good. Steve didn't really know what Phillips was going to do, but if it scared Kendall, Steve was okay with that. After everything he'd done…His team had nearly died in Zurich because Kendall had betrayed them, and then they'd nearly gotten killed again in Salzburg after he set them up. Arthur had died because Kendall had tipped Hydra off at the factory. Those guys from the 49th and the people from the 89th and 107th. The old couple at the inn in Zurich. And those were just the ones he was sure about. At this point, Steve wasn't above laying the death of every student who'd ever been caught in an ambush at Kendall's feet. Once you added in the people who'd been hurt on top of that…

Kendall composed himself, sat back in his chair. "You know, what with all the commotion, I never asked how you figured it out, but I think I can guess. It was the Barnes brat, wasn't it? He remembered." Phillips didn't respond, but Kendall shook his head. "I knew I should have just killed him when I had the chance."

Steve growled. He'd seen it, when they'd watched Bucky's memory. Before Kendall had decided on the _Obliviate_ spell, in that split second of indecision, there had been a moment where he'd contemplated killing him. Steve had seen it in his eyes then, just as casual as he heard it in his voice now.

"Is he out there?" Kendall continued, nodding towards the silver barrier. "I know I would be." He turned his face towards the barrier, looking in their direction even though he couldn't see them. "Rogers too, I would imagine. That sanctimonious little whelp." Kendall turned back to Phillips. "There were times in class where you wouldn't believe the amount of self-control it took to keep from cursing him into oblivion," he said conversationally. "If nothing else, Chester, I admire your ability to have refrained from strangling him for the past six years."

Bucky snorted softly.

"What?" Steve asked, arching a curious eyebrow.

"So, we've confirmed that Kendall hates kids," Bucky said. "But you said something a while back about him hating you as much as he hates all the other students. I think he _definitely_ hates you more."

Steve did huff a laugh at that. "Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual."

Phillips, again, did not respond, and Kendall looked a little annoyed about that, but he carried on. "Have you invited the rest of his group of misfits to watch as well?" Kendall wondered. Steve wasn't sure where the rest of the group was, actually, but they should be on their way. "For all that you're supposed to be one of the 'good guys', this is starting to feel rather like a blood sport, isn't it? Something like a public execution."

"Don't think I haven't ruled an execution out," Phillips said.

Kendall smiled in a _very_ unnerving way at that. "I imagine an S.S.R. execution would be a very dull affair indeed. That's one of the problems with being one of the 'good guys'; you don't get to really enjoy something like that. Not in the way we do. A good execution is one of my favorite parts of the job," he said, rolling his head slowly to face the barrier again. "Did you know that, Miss Carter?" he said, that smile of his getting worse. "I assume you're out there too—a nosy little trollop like you would be drawn to something like this like a moth to a flame. Did you know how much I enjoy executions?" That grin was nothing short of evil now. "J'ai certainement apprécié le sien."

Steve didn't understand why Kendall had suddenly switched into French—and who was he talking about, that he'd enjoyed her execution?—but Peggy's eyes looked as though she was right on the brink of a revelation.

"Il est écrit dans les journaux qu'elle est morte dans son sommeil, mais nous avons dû tout nettoyer ensuite pour créer cette impression," Kendall went on, mockingly apologetic, and Steve heard Peggy's breath catch in her throat, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. The look in her eyes was nothing short of absolute horror.

"Peggy?" he asked worriedly.

"Pegs, what's wrong?" Bucky asked at the same time.

Kendall chuckled. "C'était lent et sanglant et absolument glorieux," he continued, clearly enjoying himself. "Et je n'aurais jamais pu le faire si ce n'était pour vous," he finished triumphantly, and Peggy swallowed convulsively and Steve was just in time to dart behind her and catch her as her knees gave out.

She made a noise like she was about the throw up and they made it just out the door and into the hallway before she vomited all over the floor. Steve didn't know what to do but hold her up and hold her hair out of her face. He looked up at Bucky, who looked just as worried as he did.

When she stopped throwing up, she closed her eyes and started to cry, shaking in Steve's arms, and he pulled her away from the mess and sat down against the wall, tugging her into his lap and tucking her head into his shoulder. He held her tightly as she cried, sharing worried glances with Bucky, who had Vanished the mess on the floor and was crouching next to them uncertainly. What the hell had Kendall done? Steve ran back over his words in his head, trying to see if he'd missed anything—Kendall had killed someone, had clearly enjoyed it, and had cleaned up what was evidently a messy death to make it look like an accident for the papers. But who had he killed, and why was he speaking French, and why the hell did he think Peggy had anything to do with it?

She only cried for a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity as Steve sat there and rocked her and wondered what to do. She stopped crying and pulled in a deep, shaky breath, then another, a little steadier.

"Peggy?" he asked again, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

"I'm alright," she said, sounding anything but.

"Peggy, what happened?" he asked.

She was quiet for a minute, clearly pulling herself together enough to speak.

"You want some water?" Bucky offered as the silence continued. He conjured a glass and magically filled it, holding it out to her. She accepted it with a nod, washing away the taste of vomit as she drank deeply. She looked calmer when she was done.

"It was him," she said flatly. "That mission with Damaris when I got stuck and had to spend the night in the trunk. He was the one I heard talking with Zola and Sauer, and he was the one—" She swallowed hard. "He was one of the ones we gave those memories to for analysis, because he was the Potions Master, and we thought he might be able to figure out what it was they spent the first part of the night talking about." She swallowed again. "He's the one that killed Damaris."

Steve felt a sick weight drop into his stomach. That was why he'd started speaking in French—to let Peggy know it was his voice she'd heard.

Tears were welling up in her eyes again. "I should have known that voice," she whispered. "He sounded different, but, _argh_!" she growled. "It's so obvious now. For a bloody _year_ I've been—" Her voice caught in her throat. "I never recognized it, I—"

"Peggy, it isn't your fault," Steve said as she started to cry again.

"I hear him every day in class," she protested angrily.

"Speaking English," he pointed out gently.

"A _year_, Steve," she argued quietly. "A year. I—" She swallowed down a sob. "All those people that have gotten hurt, that have died, if I had just put it together earlier…"

"Listen to me," Steve said, placing a hand softly under her chin and tilting it up so she was looking at him. The pain swimming in her hazel eyes broke his heart. "It's not your fault," he said firmly. "You had no idea he could even speak French. Changing languages changes a person's voice so much. No one could have expected you to know it was him."

"He's just trying to get inside your head," Bucky said quietly, laying a hand on her shoulder. He smiled humorlessly. "That's what Hydra's good at. And that's all he has left now, because we caught him and he knows his time is up."

Steve nodded. "And we wouldn't've caught him without you."

"Bucky's the one who remembered," she said.

She looked like she wanted to believe them, but wasn't ready to absolve herself just yet. Steve got that. It was hard to let go of responsibility when things went wrong. He hugged her a little closer. "Yeah, but Peggy, you're the one who figured out there was a spy in the first place. We wouldn't've made it this far without you—hell, we wouldn't've even been looking for him. That's why he's going after you now."

She sniffed and nodded, her cheeks going pink. "I know," she said. "I know. He's—he's just getting into my head. I'm sorry, I…"

"Hey, it's okay," Steve said. He smiled gently. "Like Bucky said, Hydra's good at that."

She huffed a soft laugh. "Yeah." She shook her head. "I just…I can't help feeling I should have caught _some_thing before now."

"Just like all the rest of us," Steve said sympathetically. "We've all been here too, missing everything that seems embarrassingly obvious in hindsight."

"Tell me about it," Bucky agreed, getting a watery chuckle from Peggy. "You know how many times I've seen him do that stupid thing with his glasses?"

"We all missed stuff," Steve said. "But we've got him now."

"You're right," Peggy replied, wiping away the moisture in her eyes and leaving resolution in its place. She drew in a deep breath and nodded before smiling gratefully at both of them, then slid out of Steve's lap, standing up. "Let's go see what else we can get."

Back in the dungeon, Rains cast an evaluating eye over them before nodding and returning to her one-handed treatment of Howard, who seemed to be getting a little of his normal color back. Phillips and Kendall were still sitting across from each other on the other side of the barrier.

"Did we miss anything?" Steve asked.

Rains shook her head. "A bit more taunting and some very vulgar language on Kendall's part. They've only just started."

"Started what?" Bucky asked.

She nodded toward the two men who were sitting there quietly. "Legilimancy. Much nastier than it was with you, love," she said, patting Bucky once on the shoulder. "Professor Phillips has got to fight his way in this time. Kendall's an accomplished enough Occlumens to have some strong walls up, but Chester has no need to be delicate this time. I believe the metaphor of a sledgehammer would not be inappropriate."

Bucky winced at that description. "If what he did with me was delicate…" He shook his head, but he didn't look like he was feeling much in the way of sympathy. Steve certainly wasn't.

The rest of the Howlies showed up and were given a quick explanation of what had gone on so far. Rains conjured some chairs for them and called one of the house elves to bring them some dinner—they were going to be down here a long time.

"It was a great battle today. The young masters are unharmed?" Winston asked Steve and Bucky when he came back with food.

"Yeah, we're alright," Bucky said. He looked at Winston curiously. "Did you know about this?"

Winston smiled. "Sir must stop being so surprised. House elves is knowing many things." His smile vanished and he glared through the barrier. "Is a very bad man, that one. Very bad."

"You didn't…You didn't know he was bad before, did you?" Steve asked, hoping he didn't sound accusatory. He wasn't trying to be, but he knew house elves _did_ hear a lot, and he knew there were some weird magical rules regarding what they could and couldn't do as far the people they worked for. It was possible they knew about Kendall and had been unable to say anything.

"No, Master Steve," Winston said, shaking his head, and he didn't seem offended. "But Winston heard much as the staff prepared to catch him, and the house elves was tasked with keeping students away from the fight." He shook his head again. "A very bad man."

"Well, hopefully he won't be hurting anybody else now," Bucky said.

"Good," Winston replied. He nodded over at Peggy. "Mistress Peggy is well? She is looking ill."

"She's…She's okay," Steve said. "Kendall just…said some stuff that upset her."

"Mm," Winston replied. He looked very unhappy, and Steve wondered what exactly he'd overheard. "Winston shall speak to Willow when he is going back to the kitchens."

"I don't think Peggy wants to sleep through this," Bucky told him.

Winston laughed a little at that. "Willow works with many herbs, Master Bucky. She has many more things than just for sleeping." He bowed and left, returning not much later with a cup and speaking with Peggy in low tones. She smiled and accepted the cup, and her color seemed to return after she drank it.

Inside the barrier, the battle of wills continued. Phillips did not seem to be hampered by the fact that he was temporarily down an eye. Like with Bucky, they both sat still, hardly moving. Unlike with Bucky, when one of them _did_ twitch or gasp, it was much more dramatic. Steve supposed the reactions were bigger because the stakes were higher. And Kendall was fighting Phillips off, wasn't he? Bucky had let him in.

No one really said much as the evening wore on, as though they were worried any talking might distract Phillips, even though he couldn't hear them in there. All of them snapped to attention as Phillips let out an audible wince and recoiled slightly, though he didn't break eye contact with Kendall. Blood started dripping from his nose.

"That can't be good," Gabe muttered.

"Should we do something?" Steve asked, looking up at Nurse Rains, who looked discouragingly worried.

She shook her head. "Nothing we can do," she said quietly, though her fingers on her good hand tightened around her wand.

They all watched anxiously for another minute, then Phillips growled and a small, triumphant smile split his face—a smile that was made rather alarming due to the blood that continued to drip from his nose and was staining his now-bared teeth. "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you, boy?" they heard him snarl. Kendall cried out and clasped his good hand to the side of his head, and Phillips' smile got a little wider. "Nice try, though."

The look on Kendall's face now reminded Steve a little bit of how Bucky had looked the week before when he sat across from Phillips, with that wide-eyed inability to look away. But where Bucky had looked sad and a little nervous, Kendall looked terrified. Phillips' face was concentrated and determined, and none of them dared to stop watching now.

They sat that way a little longer, then with another cry, Kendall slumped forward onto the table, pulling his arm up over his head and curling into as much of a ball as he could manage while chained to the table. Phillips got to his feet and stalked toward the barrier, dashing a hand across his face to wipe away the offending blood. "Vials," he snapped at Rains as soon as he was through.

"Just let me—" she began, reaching up a hand towards his head.

"Now!" he barked, and she turned and grabbed a handful of glass vials from the table behind her.

"What is he doing?" Steve whispered, not wanting to interrupt, but not understanding what was happening. It looked like Phillips was copying memories out of his head, but Steve didn't understand the rush, or why he'd be copying his own memories instead of Kendall's.

"You can't copy someone's memory unless they let you," Jim said quietly. "But whatever he did in there…" He grimaced. "He saw something of Kendall's that he wants to keep. He saw it, so it's his memory now too, but stuff like that, I think you have to copy pretty quickly or else it loses clarity. It's not _actually_ his, so his brain's not gonna store it right to keep long-term."

"Oh," Steve replied. He shot a glance back into the cell at Kendall, who remained in his protective little ball. He wondered what Phillips had seen.

"Alright," Phillips said, setting the vials back down on the table, each one now full of shimmery silver memories. "Do you have the Veritaserum?" he asked Rains.

"Yes, but you're not having it just yet," she said quietly. "I need a look at you first."

"Gwyneth, the state he's in—" Phillips started.

"The state he's in will keep!" she snapped back. She lowered her voice, and Steve could see his friends watching the two of them curiously, and he realized his enhanced hearing was giving him the ability to hear what they couldn't. "You can't pretend he didn't hurt you in there, and I need to make sure it's stopped before you go in there and do any more damage, you great idiot!"

Steve didn't think he'd ever heard anyone call Phillips names where he could hear them, and to his very great surprise, the fire in Phillips' face died down and he smiled softly. "Fine. But do it quick."

Rains started waving her wand around Phillips' head and muttering spells softly. Steve turned away, suddenly feeling like he was watching something personal.

"Did he really do that to you?" Jim was asking Bucky, nodding at Kendall.

Bucky shook his head. "Not near as bad. He was actually being careful with me." He turned towards Steve, and Steve could tell he was thinking about what Rains had said then, that there were other things they could have done to find the memory they wanted, but they were things that would have hurt him. It would seem this was what she'd meant. Steve shuddered.

Jim asked Bucky some more about what Phillips had done with him, while Dugan was explaining Legilimancy in more detail to an impressed-looking Gabe and Monty, so Steve turned to where Peggy was sitting on his other side, arms crossed and staring thoughtfully into the cell. "Are you feeling any better?" he asked her.

She nodded, still looking at Kendall. "I am. I'm just…going back over things. Figuring out where he came into everything—he wasn't involved in all the missions, but I'm putting together how he learned about them."

Steve nodded. "Hey, um, listen…" He sighed. "I'm sorry. For getting all…snappy with you. I was just, I was all on edge from knowing he was out there and not knowing what was going on with the fight and worrying that he was still gonna come after Bucky or something. And I know you…" He knew Peggy had been taking this whole thing personally since what happened to Damaris. He knew she'd been working hard for over a year to try to nail him down. Of course she was gonna get mad when she felt like she was being cut out of the loop. "I know this is real important to you, and I wasn't trying to cut you out of anything by not going back in for you. I just…"

Peggy smiled at him softly. "You had to act quickly and you were just doing the best you could in the moment."

"Yeah, well, I didn't have to be a jerk about it afterwards. I'm sorry."

She leaned her head over on his shoulder. "I'm sorry too. I'm afraid I got rather more focused on my ego than on the big picture." Her cheeks were faintly pink. "I'm very angry about a lot of things right now, but you're not actually one of them."

Steve smiled down at her. "Forgive and forget?" he offered.

"Deal," she replied, kissing him quickly on the cheek.

"It's an interrogation, guys, is it really the time?" Bucky asked, an eyebrow going up when Steve kissed her back.

"Shut up," Steve told him, then kissed her one more time just because he could.

Bucky rolled his eyes, but he smiled before turning back to watch the cell. Rains had finished with Phillips' head, and he was heading back to Kendall's table for another round.

* * *

Kendall sat up abruptly when Phillips sat down across from him again, and there was an unhinged wildness in his eyes. Not a frightening kind, but a frighten_ed_ kind, and Bucky swallowed an uncomfortable knot back down into his stomach. He didn't know what the hell Phillips had done inside Kendall's head, but just the thought that he could have done it to Bucky if he'd wanted to made him a little queasy.

He didn't hear what Phillips leaned across the table and whispered to Kendall, but evidently it was enough to make him take the Veritaserum voluntarily. If his choice was that or Phillips going back in his head again, Bucky could see why he chose the potion.

Bucky had never seen anyone under the influence of Veritaserum before. He knew it made you tell the truth, but he didn't know how. Did it all just come spilling out, or did it just mean he couldn't lie, but didn't actually have to say anything? It turned out to be a mixture of both. Kendall didn't speak until Phillips asked a question, but he would answer very thoroughly after he did.

"Let's start at the beginning," Phillips said. "How long have you been with Hydra?"

"Nine years," Kendall replied. "Before I started working for the S.S.R."

"Nine years is longer than the war's been going on," Dugan whispered.

Peggy shrugged. "Grindelwald was around well before that, doing what he's doing now on a much smaller scale. And Hydra came out of that, so…"

"What was your original assignment?" Phillips asked.

"Gathering information," Kendall said. "Whatever I could find, initially, but as the S.S.R. started developing science of its own, I was instructed to specialize in potion and spell development, since that was my field. So, naturally, when the time came to replace Dr. Erskine, I was set up to be the obvious choice."

For the first time, Bucky saw something that might be classified as 'unsettled' flicker across Phillips' face. "You were involved in that assassination?" he asked carefully.

"Not directly," Kendall replied. "There was a standing order that it would happen once the formula was complete and appeared to be successful. I knew it was coming, but I had to be well out of it if I was going to be considered as his replacement. I was hoping for his full responsibilities, of course, but then, Mr. Stark was there to head up the research side of things. Which meant I was relegated to teaching, and I just…" He shook his head. "I absolutely loathe children, but I was prepared for the possibility, and it was worth it for the information I would have access to. Hogwarts is a very useful place for someone like me, whether I'm actually involved in research and development or not."

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Kendall talked about Erskine's death. He had been there, Bucky knew. Had held Erskine in his hands and watched him die. Phillips took a moment before speaking again, and Bucky wondered, for the first time, how _he'd_ taken Erskine's death.

"Alright," Phillips said. "Before Hogwarts. What did you do for seven and a half years? What did you pass on, and what did you screw up?"

Kendall began listing specific things he'd done. The names and places didn't mean anything to Bucky, not from that long ago. Bucky knew the truth serum was what was making him so forthcoming, but Bucky did wonder a little bit that he wasn't fighting it, or that he'd even accepted it in the first place. It occurred to him as Kendall carried on his recitation that it might have been a survival tactic—unable to do the normal Hydra suicide thing, Kendall was now a liability. Hydra would want to kill him as soon as they knew he'd been caught, so spilling enough to keep himself from getting executed was probably his only shot at staying alive.

The list of Kendall's interference went on for some time, and though Bucky did try to pay attention, he drifted in and out some—it was getting late and he was tired, and he didn't actually know what anything was that Kendall was talking about. But then he heard the word 'Azzano'.

"What did he just say?" Bucky asked, sitting up a little straighter. He wasn't imagining it. Gabe had heard it too, and Jacques. All of them, actually, were staring through the barrier in wide-eyed trepidation.

"It was just before my posting at Hogwarts," Kendall explained. "Though, of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time. But this student soldier initiative, it was such a new thing. Everyone at the Ministry and in the S.S.R. was all up in arms about it. It was easy to get a conversation going about it, and it was easy enough to get information about those teams—especially since they weren't supposed to be doing anything dangerous. No one at Hydra was worried about them, actually, since they weren't doing anything overly important. But I knew where they were, and so when Schmidt put it out that he needed more workers at the Azzano factory, I gave him the list. Of course, he took more than students in that sweep, but…" He trailed off with a small smile.

Bucky didn't realize he had stopped breathing until Steve's face appeared in front of his, and it took some effort to make out what he was saying over the rushing noise suddenly in his ears.

"Bucky?" Steve said. His hands were gripped firmly around Bucky's shoulders. "Bucky, just breathe, okay?"

It took several tries for Bucky to be able to pull a breath in, and all his other senses seemed to rush back online when he did. The rushing noise in his ears stopped and he could hear the pounding of his own heart, and he could feel the shivers running down his spine and the way his hands and his arms and his legs and…just everything was shaking.

"It was him," Bucky whispered. "That son of a—" A sob choked off his words and suddenly he was crying, and he didn't know if they were tears of rage or of pain, but they burned and there was no stopping them, and Steve just pulled him in against his chest and let him let them out.

When Bucky was able to stop, he looked up and realized they were out in the corridor again. He didn't remember coming out here, but he didn't really care right now. "It was him, Steve," he said, his voice not entirely steady yet. "He sold us out. Everything I—" Everything that had happened to him, everything Zola had done. Every minute of that hell had been because of Robert Kendall. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, refusing to allow any more tears to fall.

He felt Steve nod. "Yeah," he said, and that was all he seemed able to say. They just stood there for a minute, and somehow, Steve's anger made Bucky feel better about it. He wasn't alone in this—he never had been, but this was a very tangible reminder of that that he could feel practically rolling off of Steve. Kendall had sold him out and Hydra had beat him down, but Steve had gotten him out and pulled him back up again.

"I'm gonna kill him," Steve said. "Even if that was the only thing he did…" He shook his head. "That's more than enough." His eyes were distant, haunted with visions from a year and a half ago, and this time it was Bucky pulling Steve into a hug, his turn to reassure and ground him.

When they went back into the room, Bucky noticed was that he wasn't the only one to have reacted badly to Kendall's confession. The air was humming with tense, angry magic, and someone had broken one of the chairs. Everyone was just standing there now, though, pulling themselves together and glaring furiously through the barrier.

Kendall had now reached the part of his confessional that aligned with the timeline Bucky was familiar with. He'd been assuming that the first time that Kendall had messed with something their team was involved in was in Germany with Damaris and Sauer and Peggy in the trunk, and he was surprised to learn that wasn't true. The first thing Kendall had done that screwed things up for the Howling Commandos directly—aside from getting them all dragged off to the factory—was in France, what had been only their second mission. They'd gone to extract Guillaume, who'd turned from Hydra and was willing to deal, but they'd gotten jumped mid-mission.

"It was Guillaume we were after at that point," Kendall said. "The men we sent in were supposed to have killed him already before the children showed up. Had we realized at the time what a nuisance they were going to turn out to be, we would have had them wait and ambush the lot of them. They almost managed to pull it off anyway, but…" He sighed. "Those little boys of yours are certainly effective, I'll give them that."

"Little boys," Dugan huffed. Jacques snorted in offended agreement.

"He's really been screwing with us for that long…" Bucky sighed. He remembered that mission. They'd barely made it out of that one alive, and he'd had to take over when Steve went down.

Steve was frowning. "That was a long time ago," he said thoughtfully. "Was that when you made me get the helmet?"

Bucky shook his head. "The one after that. Although, you did spend about two-thirds of this mission heavily concussed." He wasn't surprised Steve was fuzzy on the details. He'd been in terrible shape.

Kendall had continued to pass information on to Hydra after that, and his next big play had been France again and Mueller's house in Avignon. That one was a mission Bucky didn't remember much of—he'd been beaten half to death and spent most of the time unconscious.

"I should have known better than to trust a Muggle to get the job done," Kendall snorted. "With that defense spell we set up for him, we were practically handing them over on a silver platter. And they're _children_, for goodness' sake! The staggering amount of incompetence it takes to be brought down by a bunch of teenagers…"

Phillips smiled at that. "Oh, they've brought down bigger fish than that."

"Is he…" Gabe sat up a little straighter, pointing towards the barrier. "Is he _proud_ of us?"

"He's always been proud of you," Nurse Rains said from the corner, a soft smile on her face.

Bucky had known that, kind of, when he'd gotten his letter with his Sergeant's stripes, but actually hearing it made something warm and happy purr contentedly in his chest.

"And speaking of being brought down by a bunch of teenagers," Phillips went on. "Remind me again who it was that got you?"

Peggy snorted at that, a vindictive smile flashing across her face. Kendall didn't seem to have a response to that.

"It wasn't long after that you killed the girl," Phillips said, getting Kendall back on track. Peggy's smile vanished, her expression going cold. "It had been nearly two months by then. Why wait that long?"

"Well, you didn't pass those memories on to me right away, did you?"

Phillips nodded at that. "And when we asked you for a scientific analysis of the conversation, I'm guessing you lied?"

"Naturally."

"Why didn't Sauer kill the girl? Why did you have to do it?"

"Just so that we're clear on terminology, I _got_ to do it," Kendall corrected. He smiled at the memory, and Bucky swallowed down the urge to vomit. How sick was that? "As to the why," Kendall continued. "Would you believe it was a spell? Of course, it would have been more expedient for Sauer to do it himself, but years back, when he took the girl in, he'd made an Unbreakable Vow to her mother that he would look after her. How was he to know she'd grow up to be on the wrong side?"

"And having her murdered didn't break that vow?" Phillips asked.

"You really have to appreciate the technicalities of a spell like that, Chester. You've always been so literal. Yes, Sauer, obviously could do no harm to her himself, but all he had to do was not be there. Had he been there, the spell would have obliged him to protect her, but there's nothing he can do if he isn't home." That smile was back again. "True, knowing a plan was in motion to kill her was pushing things a little bit, but we kept the date from him so that he would legitimately not know until it was too late."

"That's just sick," Gabe said, watching them in disgust. "He was really cool with letting people murder his own granddaughter?"

Peggy's lip was curled up in a snarl. "She was terrified of him," she said. "And if you had heard some of the things he said that night…" She shook her head. "Can't say I'm surprised."

Bucky didn't have time to think too much about all of that (and he was okay with that) because Kendall was talking again.

"After you put these 'Howling Commandos' together," he was saying. "Our focus as far as student teams went was mostly on them as they became a bigger threat, but this whole business of destroying the factories was really starting to concern Schmidt. I received orders to make them aware of any attacks being planned on Hydra factories, no matter who was carrying them out. And the first one was—"

"Zagreb," Phillips cut him off, already knowing the answer.

"Zagreb," Steve mouthed at the same time. Bucky caught the tremor in his throat as he swallowed down a knot of emotion. The factory outside of Zagreb had been where Arthur had died. Steve shook his head, closing his eyes briefly. Bucky could tell what he was thinking—he knew there was a spy in the ranks, he should have been prepared for an ambush. Bucky moved over so that his arm was against Steve's, leaning into him reassuringly. Steve had clocked the ambush and alerted the rest of them to it. A lot more than Arthur would have died if he hadn't.

"Zagreb," Kendall agreed. He snorted. "For all the good that did. I give them all the warning in the world, and they manage to kill one stupid kid."

Steve jerked like he was trying to swallow down the urge to vomit or yell or just jump across the barrier and strangle Kendall, and Bucky grabbed his arm. "Don't let him get in your head, Stevie," he said softly. "He's just trying to wind us up." Yeah, Bucky would have liked to jump in there and throttle Kendall himself, but keeping Steve calm helped him keep his head.

Phillips' face was carefully expressionless, and his voice was low and flat and frightening. "His name was Arthur Collins," he said quietly. "And he was a better man than you could ever hope to be."

Whatever snappy retort Kendall probably had to that died in his throat. He swallowed a couple of times before continuing. "Schmidt wasn't happy with that. He slaughtered everyone who survived the attack, he was so furious. Then again at the factory in Belgium, same thing. Thankfully, he at least couldn't fault my intel—it was sound, even if the morons at the factories couldn't seem to do anything useful with it. Thankfully, too, when the children continued to be successful, I was safely here and far away from his wrath. After that, he demanded as much information about student fighting groups as he could get, so I passed on everything I could. We started getting more that way…"

Jim's old unit, the 49th, had been the first one where they'd successfully 'gotten more'. Three students: Michael, Roddy and Stewart. Bucky used to play Quidditch with Michael. He'd been on Peggy and Dugan's team.

"…And while we never seemed to be able to nail down your boys out there," Kendall continued, nodding towards the barrier and where they were standing behind it. "At least we were seeing results. The students we _have_ been able to get since then were at least enough to appease Schmidt's wrath somewhat." Bucky felt that nausea that Kendall was so good at creating stirring in his stomach again. People had died because of him. Schoolmates of Bucky's—some he knew and some he didn't, but either way, the fact that Kendall actually sounded _happy_ about it was just…He didn't really have the vocabulary for how disgusting that was.

"The seemingly untouchable nature of your boys continues to infuriate him, however," Kendall pointed out. "And if they keep getting in his way, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries something drastic soon."

Bucky didn't really like the sound of that. On the one hand, sure, it felt good to know they were pissing Schmidt off. But on the other hand, if what they'd seen from him so far wasn't considered drastic, well, that couldn't be good.

"We decided perhaps we should make a more concerted effort to stop the boys," Kendall continued. "A more targeted attack. That was where Gray came in, in Zurich, and oh, he got close. Since I have no choice but to be honest here, I have to admit myself begrudgingly impressed by the team's tenacity in that incident, and by Rogers in particular. I'd still like to tear his liver out through his throat, but the fact that he actually got them out of that was…" He shook his head. "Erskine really did a fantastic job with him."

"It wasn't all Erskine," Phillips told him. Bucky didn't think he'd ever heard Phillips be so bluntly complimentary before, and he smiled and nudged Steve in the arm when Steve' mouth dropped open in surprise.

"Oh, bloody hell," Peggy whispered.

"What?" Steve asked.

"Kendall made the Polyjuice Potion for us for that mission. That one was _so_ secret, I couldn't figure out how he knew about it."

"He was in the infirmary too," Steve said, horrified realization slamming into place on his face. He looked like he'd been hit by a truck.

"What do you mean?" Bucky asked.

"I was the only one still awake when we came back, but Kendall was there, with Phillips and Rains. I actually…" He swallowed hard. "He did potions and medicines and things and I thought…I actually _asked_ Ethan to get him." He looked like he was about to be sick.

"Hey, don't worry about it, Cap," Dugan said. "You didn't know, we're all alive, and, hey, he wouldn't have dared to try anything with Rains and Phillips right there anyway."

"You're bloody well right he wouldn't," Rains said vehemently from behind them. They looked back at her and she smiled. "Not much can be said in way of character reference for the man, but he at least knows better than that."

They were very nearly up to the present day now, with Kendall detailing the set up in Salzburg. Peggy's face was cold as she listened, and Bucky figured she was still pretty sore about falling for the whole thing, no matter how much anyone told her it wasn't her fault. Steve's face was hard too, but carefully devoid of emotion. Bucky wondered if he was thinking about what Zwart had done to him after he'd gotten caught, or if he was forcing himself not to, and just listening—something Bucky was having trouble doing. He could still hear the way Steve's shield had spun on the floor before falling with an unnaturally loud clatter right before he vanished, and the frightened little whimpers Steve had made as he cringed away from Bucky in the chair he'd been locked into. He could still see the burn across Steve's chest, so deep it was showing signs of infection even with as fast as Steve healed, the bloody gash across his cheek that had missed his eye by millimeters, and the needle stabbing into Steve's neck and pumping him full of God only knew what. He could still feel how cold Steve's skin was, how he flinched away no matter where Bucky touched him because everything hurt, and the terrified wave of nausea in his own gut whenever he looked into Steve's sick, lost eyes.

"I'm alright, Buck," he heard Steve's voice say, a large shoulder brushing up against his. "You got me out. I'm okay."

Bucky _had_ gotten Steve out. It didn't matter how big the little punk got, he was never going to stop being Bucky's brother, and it was always going to be Bucky's job to look out for him and get him out of whatever trouble he got himself into. And he had. Bucky had saved him. Steve was okay now. He was okay.

Bucky nodded. "How mad do you think Phillips would be if I walked in there and clobbered Kendall in his smart mouth?"

"He'd probably let it slide," Peggy allowed.

It was tempting, but Bucky stayed where he was.

"Then, of course, Romania, where everything just fell apart, didn't it?" Kendall said.

"How did you find out the team was there?" Phillips asked. "We didn't tell anyone about that mission."

"The outer barrier spell. Mr. Morita was clever enough to figure out a way through, which I would not have expected, but it did send out a signal it was being interfered with."

Jim's eyes went wide. "Crap," he whispered. "I didn't know it did that." He turned to Bucky, remorse splashed across his face. "Sarge, I'm so sorry, I—"

"Don't worry about it," Bucky told him, and he meant it. "You're not the one who erased my memory. And while having that happen sucked, ultimately, it led to us catching him. No harm, no foul."

Jim didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded.

"Since no one knew about the mission, no one knew how big of a force was invading," Kendall explained. "If Schmidt had known it was just the boys, he would have sent soldiers after them and put an end to them. But, again, not knowing that, he decided removal of critical information was best. I was the first available operative with knowledge of the layout of the house and the secret entrances, so he sent me."

"And what did you take?" Phillips asked.

Bucky leaned forward interestedly, and he felt the rest of them doing the same. Whatever it was was important enough to risk sending Kendall in there while the house was being searched, and was what had set this whole thing off.

Kendall smiled like he'd won a point. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

Phillips arched an eyebrow. "You want me to go back in there?" he asked, nodding at Kendall's head.

"I would really rather you didn't," Kendall said quickly. The serum must still be working—Bucky had thought Kendall's refusal to tell him might mean it was wearing off. "No, I can't tell you what I took because I don't know. Being the closest available agent doesn't mean I knew the details of what I was getting—I was just given instructions on what to grab, and there was hardly time for me to read through it. Erasing the Barnes boy's memory of meeting me was a split-second strategic decision, but I had a little more time to think afterwards. I knew there was a risk to leaving him alive, so I didn't look at anything I retrieved, just got it back to Schmidt, and then erased my own memory of getting it, just in case." He chuckled. "I have no idea what I took."

Bucky's eyes went wide at the statement. "He erased his own memory?" He looked at Jim. "Can you even do that?"

"I guess," Jim said. "You'd have to be real careful about it."

"Dude," Gabe breathed, shaking his head.

"Can't Phillips get at it, like he did with you?" Monty wondered.

"I have no doubt you'll try digging for it," Kendall went on, answering Monty's question. "But I think you'll find it rather harder to get to, if you can get to it at all. I wasn't in as much of a rush as I was with young Mr. Barnes, and was able to be much more thorough."

Phillips stared at him for a long minute, then nodded. "I'm sure you were. But we've got some Legilimens on payroll that can make our little dance look like a tea party. You might be looking forward to some quality alone time with the Dementors by the time they're done with you." He stood and left Kendall where he was, crossing back over to their side of the barrier. "Alright, boys," he sighed, looking them over. "I think that's enough for tonight."

"What happens next, Sir?" Steve asked.

"Next," Phillips replied. "He goes back to Auror Headquarters to be made to give a recount of his actions there. Nine years working for Hydra…He's hurt a lot more people than just the S.S.R. He'll be interrogated, a lot, and someone more skilled than me will dig around in his head, see if they can't find what he erased."

Bucky grimaced at that. It hardly bore thinking about what someone even better at Legilimancy than Phillips could do.

"What's left of him will be shipped off to Azkaban, while we sort through all his evidence and try to undo what damage we can. If he survives till we get that done, there'll be a trial. You boys will, no doubt, be called to give evidence."

Steve looked at Bucky, then the rest of the team, and they all nodded. "We can do that," Steve said.

"Gladly," Bucky put in.

"Good," Phillips said. He sighed again. "That's all going to take a while, though. In the meantime, get some rest, then we'll get back to work and see what we can't get done now that that little weasel is out of the way."

He moved back over to the corner to talk with Rains, and they all began the slow trudge up the stairs. It felt a little anticlimactic, just going to bed after all that. But there wasn't much else to be done right now, and there was something very satisfying in knowing that Kendall wasn't going to be hurting anyone else.

Once they made it a few levels up to where there was a window, they realized it was well after dawn. It had been a very long night, and Bucky knew Kendall had just been hitting the highlights in his confession. It was going to take those Auror guys a long time to go through everything, and he was suddenly very glad that that wasn't his job and that he got to go to bed.

Back in the Hufflepuff dorm, Bucky, Steve and Jacques had just finished changing into their pajamas when there was a soft knock at the door and Winston appeared, holding a tray with three mugs on it. "Good morning, young masters," he greeted, quietly, in deference to Dave and Morris, who were still asleep. "Nurse Rains has sent this with instructions for you to drink it before you go to sleep."

"Sleeping potion?" Steve asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow.

Winston nodded. "Yes, Master Steve. She has also given Winston clear instruction that he is in no way permitted to leave the dorm until you has each had some. Winston was given instructions to mind you specifically in this regard."

Jacques chuckled to himself and Bucky laughed as Steve huffed indignantly. "Oh, she's got your number, Stevie."

"Why does she just assume I'm going to fight?" he protested.

"Because she's got six years of you being a little snot to back her up," Bucky said, picking up one of the cups Winston was offering. It had been a long week, and a _very_ long night, but after everything they'd heard, Bucky's mind was racing. He didn't have any objections to getting some distance between himself and Kendall's crimes and getting a good, long night (or day, as the case may be) of sleep. Judging by the way Steve didn't actually argue and downed a cup of his own, he was feeling the same way.

"Thanks, Winston," Bucky said, setting his empty cup down on the tray. He could feel sleep rushing through his veins and weighing his limbs down, and he crawled into bed and nestled down into the covers.

"Thanks," Steve repeated with a yawn. Jacques was already asleep.

"Sleep well, young masters," Winston said, smiling and bowing as he left the room. "Sleep well."

* * *

_So the spy is finally down for the count. Time for our team to get some well-deserved rest, then see if they can't get some good work done with Kendall out of the way. See you Friday! I'd love to hear what you're thinking of the story!_


	65. Riding Lessons And Family Heirlooms

_Lots of stuff going on for our team, so now it's time for a bit of a breather. We've got some nice fluff, Steve's 17th birthday, and Steve and Peggy go on their first real date that doesn't involve getting shot at.  
_

* * *

Steve didn't wake up until that afternoon, and when he left the dorm, he found the castle was abuzz with the news about Kendall. Nearly everyone stopped him to ask about it, and it was a relief to get outside. He wasn't sure what he was going to do out there—he'd actually been headed to the kitchen, but decided he wanted to avoid the crowd between it and him more than he wanted to eat. He debated taking a walk, then headed instead for the little garage off the physical training area where his motorcycle was. Mr. Barnes had been right back when he'd offered Steve the key to his garage and the pile of scrap that slowly grew into his bike—having something to do with your hands was a good way to get your mind to settle.

He found a big rock to prop the door open and let the sunlight in, then headed for the back corner where the tool box was. The bike was running fine, but it was making a weird rattling noise. Bucky and Gabe had looked things over with him some earlier in the week, and between them they'd decided it had something to do with the spark plugs. He hadn't gotten very far into the process of inspecting them when Peggy appeared in the door.

"I thought you might be down here," she said. "Got mobbed on your way out, did you?"

Steve smiled. "Yeah. How did everyone know so fast?"

"Well, there _was_ a battle in the staff room yesterday afternoon," she pointed out. "People are bound to wonder."

Steve nodded in agreement. "You okay?" he asked.

She nodded back. "I am. Sleeping helped. You?"

"I'm good. Kind of tired of talking about it, though," he added. He knew he wasn't done figuring out all this mess, not by a long shot, but there wasn't any rush to get it done right now.

Peggy nodded. "Lucky for you I didn't come out here to make you spill your soul."

He smiled at that. She probably needed a break from it too. "Then what'd you come out here for?"

"I came to hold you to your promise to teach me how to ride this thing. But seeing as it doesn't appear to be road-worthy at the moment…" She grabbed an empty bucket, flipped it upside down, and sat down on top of it. "Teach me how to fix it."

Steve's smile widened. "Well, you're not gonna learn anything sitting over there. Come over here and grab that little wrench on the floor."

She grinned, pulled something out of her pocket to tie her hair up, and moved over to kneel beside him. He showed her what he was doing, then turned the bike on to demonstrate the noise he was trying to fix. She listened intently, asked a couple of questions, and they got down to work. They spent the next couple of hours tinkering and talking about spark plugs and combustion chambers and engine valves and crankshafts and not thinking about Hydra or spies at all. "Beautiful," Steve said, testing the engine again when they were done. "Oh, listen to her purr." He nudged Peggy's shoulder proudly. "We'll make a mechanic out of you yet." He looked up towards the door. "I'd say we could take her out for a spin, but it'll be dark soon. May have to save your driving lesson for another day."

"There's one more day in the weekend," Peggy pointed out. "Sunday afternoon drive?"

"Sounds good," he replied.

She stood up and started picking up the tools she'd been using. "What?" she asked, looking back at him.

Steve realized he was staring at her with his mouth hanging open. Framed in the doorway, she was outlined with a ring of light from the setting sun. Her dark hair was glowing gold, flyaway strands that had escaped the hair tie creating a shining halo around her face. She was covered in dirt and sweat and engine oil and she was absolutely breath-taking. Steve stepped forward and brushed her cheek gently with his fingers before sliding his hand around and cupping the back of her head, pulling her forward gently to kiss her.

She was smiling up at him softly when he pulled away. "What was that for?"

"Because I love you," he said happily. "That's all."

Her smile widened, warmth dancing in her hazel eyes. "Well, in that case…" She went up on her toes and nuzzled her nose against his. "I love you too." She kissed him softly. "So very much."

He barely even noticed the attention of the crowd when they went in to dinner.

They ate dinner over the Slytherin table with Monty and his girlfriend, Reinette. Bucky was over at the Ravenclaw table, and it looked like he was explaining to Vicki and Becky what had really happened in the castle, and the two of them were alternating between being angry and worried, and neither one at the same time. Jim and Gabe were not helping, just watching. That was a conversation Steve was very glad not to be in the middle of.

Though spending the evening with Peggy was an inviting prospect, just because they'd caught a Hydra spy didn't mean they didn't have exams on Monday. Steve walked her up to Gryffindor Tower, then took the back way back down to his dorm, avoiding the curious attention of his schoolmates. He got cleaned up and headed for the common room, which was thankfully nearly empty, taking his stack of books and dropping down into one of the nice chairs.

"Weekend you've had, you'd think they'd be gracious about the homework," came a voice from beside him. He turned to see Donovan standing there, his own pile of books in hand. "Don't worry," he said with a smile, dropping into one of the other chairs. "I'm not going to ask you to tell me all about it."

"Thanks," Steve replied. "It seems like it's all anyone wants to know about."

"Well, sure," Donovan agreed, digging in his school bag for a piece of parchment. "Off-campus missions aside, it's got to be the most exciting thing going on around here all year. Me…" He shrugged. "I figure he's a traitor and he's out the way now, and that's good enough for me. I've got enough excitement in my life as it is. And I didn't much like him anyway," he added with a smirk.

Steve laughed at that. "Oh, I hear you on that. Although, it would seem the feeling was mutual on his part."

"Doesn't surprise me at all. Although, evil geniuses and espionage aside, you think we're still having a Potions exam?"

"Probably," Steve sighed. "Phillips has a lot to handle with all this, but he's efficient. I bet he's got, like, three subs lined up already."

"Yeah," Donovan agreed.

They worked in companionable silence for a while, occasionally asking a question like how to spell something or what the correct ratio of lacewings to dried vanilla pods was for a sleeping potion. The common room was starting to fill up as the evening went on, but aside from the occasional congratulations or asking if, after the events of the weekend, he was okay, people mostly left Steve alone. He really appreciated that about Hufflepuff. It hadn't taken him long to feel at home here after he'd first arrived, and though he knew some people better than others, everyone seemed to want to make sure all the rest of them were doing alright.

"Right," Donovan said, standing up and scooping up his pile of books. "Think I'll finish up in my room—that lot's about to start practicing disarming spells," he added, nodding at a knot of Second-Years in the corner. "That's about it for the peace and quiet, I reckon," he said with a smile.

He left for his room, and after a few minutes of the Second-Years' dueling, Steve decided to follow his example. He realized as he picked up his books that after these exams, Donovan would be leaving school. As far as the 107th was concerned, Colin would take over, and Colin was great—Steve didn't have any reservations about that. He'd just really come to appreciate Donovan's steady, reassuring nature. Steve had been working with him on these missions for a year and a half now. He was going to miss him.

Once he got to his room, the quiet and the fact that Steve was still exhausted after everything with Kendall made it difficult to focus much on his homework. He startled abruptly when the door shut, jerking up from where he'd apparently been laying down on the bed and knocking his Herbology book to the floor.

"Working hard, huh?" Bucky said from where he stood by the door with wet hair and a towel around his waist.

"I wasn't sleeping," Steve said automatically.

Bucky snorted. "What, so, when I came in here earlier to get my stuff for the shower, you were lying facedown in the book so you could see the words better?"

"Shut up," Steve complained, sitting up and stretching. He bent over and picked up the book, dropping it into his bag. It would seem that was as far as he was getting tonight. "At least I got some studying done. What have you been doing all evening?"

"Putting out fires," Bucky said from behind the closet door. The towel flew up to hang over the door and he reappeared in his pajama pants, shirt in one hand. He scratched absently at his left shoulder—the scars from where the siren had bitten him last year had healed more neatly than Rains had originally thought they would, but they hadn't vanished entirely, and what was there sometimes still itched and bothered him. "You would think," Bucky said conversationally as he slipped his shirt over his head and smoothed his hair back down. "That I might get some sympathy for having my memory erased. But certain little sisters and girlfriends of mine seem to think that I should have been more forthcoming with that information."

"They were mad you didn't tell them?" Given the circumstances, that seemed a little unfair.

"Well, yes and no," Bucky amended. "Given the fact that I could have gotten killed, I _did_ get a lot of sympathy for that. But they were both a little huffy about the fact that I did not trust them enough to tell them the truth."

"You didn't tell them because Phillips told you not to," Steve pointed out.

"Yes, and I said that," Bucky said. He sighed. "I don't think they were actually mad, just…It's been a weird week for everybody. But we got it all smoothed out."

"Good."

Though it was earlier than they both usually went to bed, they were both tired, and so, after talking a little longer, they both went to sleep. Steve's dreams were like a fast-forwarded version of their missions, as though now that he wasn't under the influence of a sleeping potion, his brain wanted to sort through everything Kendall had brought up the night before. He woke up with a gasp to see Bucky leaning over him in the pre-dawn light, one hand on his shoulder.

"You okay, Stevie?" he asked.

Steve realized he was sweating and he'd been breathing hard, but he nodded. "Yeah," he said, feeling his breathing and his heart rate start to slow back down. "Just a bad dream."

"Zwart?" Bucky guessed.

"Yeah," Steve nodded. Once he'd gotten all of Zwart's drugs out of his system, he'd only had the occasional nightmare about his time locked up in the Hydra officer's house. But of all the missions Kendall had brought up, that one was still pretty fresh in his mind, so he didn't suppose it was unusual that this would bring them back.

"Wanna talk about it?" Bucky offered.

Steve sat up and twisted his torso, turning until he felt a satisfying pop in his spine. One of the things Zwart had tried to get him to talk had involved some sort of potion injected directly into his spinal column—something about getting it into his brain more efficiently with the nerves or…something. It had hurt too much for Steve to really pay attention. "Nah, I'm alright," he replied. That was what he'd been dreaming about, but he'd cracked the ghost of the feeling out of his back now, and he felt okay. He smiled up at Bucky. "Thanks. Sorry I woke you up."

"Don't worry about it." Bucky looked him over, seemed to decide he believed him when he said he was okay, and patted him on the shoulder. Steve yawned and Bucky smiled. "That's right," he said. "Go back to sleep." He nodded at the faint light coming through the window. "It's way too early for you to be getting up."

Steve smiled and shifted back down into a more comfortable position as Bucky crossed back to his own bed. He _was_ tired.

He met Peggy at breakfast the next morning, and they decided to change their afternoon drive to a morning one since it was so nice out. They headed down to the little garage and spent a while sorting through the meager selection of helmets available. Steve already had one, but they weren't going anywhere until Peggy had one too.

"Look, let's just use this one," Peggy said, drawing his attention away from considering the ones he had laid out.

"It's too big," he protested.

"Yes, but…" She tapped it with her wand and it grew smaller. She placed it on her head, adjusted the strap, then tapped it one more time. "Perfect fit," she said with a smile.

"Right," Steve agreed, feeling his cheeks go a little pink. It hadn't occurred to him to use magic as an option for shrinking it.

He wheeled the bike outside and popped down the kickstand. Peggy got up on it, shifting a bit to get comfortable, and he pointed out where everything was. Once she seemed confident, he had her kick the stand back up and start the engine.

"Alright, give it a shot," he said.

"You're not coming?" she asked.

"You should figure out how to balance by yourself before you add me into it," he told her. "I'm kind of heavy."

She grinned, clearly pleased at the idea of taking it out herself. She revved the engine and took off with more gusto than Steve had the first time he'd tried it and Steve laughed. He watched her until she was out of sight, then sat down on the grass to wait for her. She was just going down the trail to the lake and back.

About ten minutes later, the sound of the engine came up over the hill, and then she was pulling into a mostly steady stop in front of him. "I love this thing!" she declared happily.

Steve grinned. "That's great!" He looked at the streak of dirt running the length of her right leg. "Did you fall over?"

"Just once," she said, waving the comment away and making a half-hearted attempt to brush off the dirt. "I did like you said, I rolled away from the bike when I came off. You're right, the balance is a bit tricky. But I think I've got it. Can we go for a proper drive now?"

"Sure," he told her. It was kind of weird climbing onto the back of the bike, and it took him a second to figure out where to put his legs so they weren't in her way. It was nice wrapping his arms around her waist though, and holding her so closely.

They took off toward the main gate and the road that led to Hogsmeade. He instructed her to branch off where the road forked before they got into town, taking them out into the countryside. At first, Steve sat very stiffly, trying to move as little possible so he didn't affect her steering, but he relaxed as he felt her gain more comfortable control of the machine. It was nice out here—the sun was warm and the air was clear, and this was really why he liked to come out and ride. It was nice to get out of the school gates, to get out into the world and just enjoy it instead of having to fight someone. And it was…There was something that felt really good about being able to share it with Peggy.

They drove for an hour or so, Steve pointing out the places to turn that kept them in a slow loop around Hogsmeade, but otherwise they didn't talk. Just a mile out from town, Peggy had to stop and swerve abruptly to try to avoid a rabbit that ran out into the road. She probably would have been able to correct if it was just her, but Steve's weight along with hers was enough to put the bike into a fall. Steve rolled away from the bike, proud that she remembered how he'd shown her to take a fall as she rolled away too, although the elbow to his gut when she landed on top of him, he could have done without.

"Sorry," she said, hopping back up. "Are you alright?"

"I'm good," he said, rubbing his offended midsection. They hadn't been going at great speed, and had landed in the grass. No harm done to either of them, or to the bike, which had slid into a bush. The rabbit was sitting in the middle of the road staring at them.

"Sorry," she said again, looking embarrassed.

"It happens," he told her. "I nearly ran into a deer out here once. Sorry, I should have mentioned there was wildlife to look out for."

"I'm a country girl, remember? I'm aware that animals live in the woods," she told him with a smirk. She picked up the bike, then glared at the rabbit, which was still sitting there. "You could get out of the way, you know. You get run over sitting there, you've got no one but yourself to blame."

She leaned the bike towards Steve, offering him the handlebars. "You done?" he asked her.

She shrugged, her cheeks going faintly pink. "Well, I just crashed your bike, so…"

"So, get back on and try again," he told her. He wasn't mad that she'd crashed it.

She smiled and got back on, and he climbed on behind her. The noise of the engine restarting was enough to send the rabbit scampering into the bushes, and they continued their journey towards town.

They came to a stop outside of the Three Broomsticks. "You want some lunch?" Steve asked, nodding to the pub. "My treat. Last time we were on this thing, I did tell you I'd bring you down here on a date sometime."

"Hopefully it will less eventful than our last date," she said with a smile, hopping off the bike and extending her arm so he could take it.

Steve still didn't like to joke about the time she got shot, but, even with that aside, the mission in Paris _had_ been pretty eventful. He smiled and took her arm and they went inside.

They sat at a table by the window, and Steve felt a little self-conscious when he realized how dirty they were from the dust on the road and the crash, but no one else seemed to mind. It was less crowded than when they used to come down for Hogsmeade weekends, but there were still enough people around to watch. They commented on some of the more garish robe choices, speculated about a suspicious-looking bunch of men playing cards off in one corner, and spotted a couple of Aurors they recognized from work. They didn't want to talk about work, though, or classes, so they talked about Quidditch, compared notes on some of the gossip around school, and talked about the mystery novel Peggy had insisted Steve read.

"I still don't buy that you saw that twist coming," Steve protested. "The _narrator_ was the murderer? That's just…That's just cheating. Why would it occur to anyone to suspect him?"

"That's the beauty of it," she argued, reaching over and stealing a french fry off his plate. "She's playing with the rules of the genre, but she's not actually broken any of them. The narrator just gave us the same story he gave the police, which is quite clever when you think about it. Did you really not like it?"

"No, it was really good," Steve said. He and his ma had always listened to the whodunits on the radio, but he'd never been much of one for mystery novels before. Peggy devoured them, though, and he'd picked up a couple at her recommendation. They _were_ pretty good. "I liked it, I'm just annoyed. You know how hard I was thinking trying to figure out which of the characters did it?"

"Your problem is, you're too trusting," she said, taking another fry and pointing at him with it for emphasis. "Just because the narrator was telling us the story, it doesn't mean we should trust him."

"And your problem is, you're too suspicious," he countered. "The narrator is in a position of responsibility, and we _should_ be able to trust him."

"Most of the time, sure," she agreed. "That's what makes a twist like this one so clever. It wouldn't work if everyone did it."

"It _was_ a good twist," he admitted. "And once he confessed, it all fit in so well. Stop eating my french fries."

"But they're good," she protested, picking up another one.

"But they're _mine_," he countered. "You already ate all of yours."

Very slowly, maintaining eye contact the whole time, she reached over and grabbed another one and stuck it in her mouth. Steve narrowed his eyes and slid his plate farther away. "You think they're safe over there?" she asked.

"Saf_er_," he allowed. "You can't reach them now."

"Who says I need to be able to reach them?" she asked. Before Steve could ask what she meant, she opened her eyes wider and batted her eyelashes softly, sticking her lower lip out in just a hint of a pout.

"Stop that," Steve told her. She blinked sadly. "Stop it. Oh, come on, that's not—" He looked down at his plate but it was like he could still feel her making that face at him. "That's not fair," he muttered, shoving the plate back to where she could reach it.

She laughed, grabbed a handful of fries and dropped them on her plate, then leaned across the table and kissed his nose. "Thank you," she said, still smiling. "You are sweet."

After they finished eating, they walked up and down the main street for a while, looking in all the windows and popping into a few of the stores. Peggy picked up a few things from the apothecary to refill some of her dwindling potion supplies, then they headed back to the bike.

"You want to drive home?" Steve asked.

"No, you go on," Peggy said, hopping up onto the back. "You haven't had a turn yet." Steve climbed onto the bike and she slid forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and nestling her chin into his shoulder. "Besides, riding in the back has its perks."

It was a short ride up to school, and though an afternoon by the lake sounded inviting, there was still studying to do. "Hang on," Peggy said, stopping before heading for the stairs up to her dorm. "I got you something."

She pushed a little box into his hands, and Steve opened it to see his favorite fudge from Honeyduke's. "Hey, wow, thanks!"

"You're welcome. I had a lovely time today."

"Wait, you got me this to say thanks for taking you out? Peggy, you didn't have to do that."

"No, that's not why I got it." She went up on her toes and kissed him soundly. "_That_ is to say thank you for taking me out today. That," she went on, pointing at the fudge. "Is just because I felt like it. And because I ate so many of your chips."

Steve laughed at that. "Well, thank you. Wait, when did you…I was in the store with you, when did you get this?"

She laughed. "I'm a special agent," she told him proudly. "I'm supposed to be sneaky."

Steve laughed and pulled her close against him and kissed her again. "Thank you," he said again. "I had a great time with you today."

"So did I," she replied. "Can we do it again some time?"

"It's a date," he said.

Exams started the next morning—Phillips _did_ have someone to cover Potions—and though everyone was up late every night studying, they seemed to be over just as soon as they started, and everyone headed for home.

The first few days at home were quiet, everyone just relaxing and catching up on their rest, though Steve couldn't help but get a little bit excited about his birthday coming up. Even though he was the Captain, he was the youngest one on the team, and he was ready to catch up and be a legal adult like the rest of them. And seventeen was a big birthday and it meant a party with lots of delicious food, and he was really looking forward to that too.

On the morning of his birthday, Steve woke up feeling like someone was looking at him, and when he opened his eyes, Becky's face was about six inches away from his, staring at him intently. He startled and jumped back and she giggled and stood up from where she'd been kneeling on the floor next to the bed. "Good morning," she said. "Me and Mama made you birthday pancakes. You should get up and come eat them."

Since there was usually a neighborhood cookout on the Fourth of July, they did a celebratory lunch for Steve's birthday earlier in the day instead of a dinner. Mrs. Barnes baked his favorite, a strawberry pie, and the Kowalskis and Mrs. O'Brien came and brought food and they had a party. Unlike Bucky earlier in the year, Steve had remembered as soon as he'd woken up that he was allowed to do magic now, and when Mr. Kowalski asked him what he had done first, everyone laughed when he replied that he'd levitated a pillow and thrown it at Bucky's face to wake him up for breakfast.

The Kowalskis gave him one of those nice telescopes like Bucky had gotten for his birthday. Mrs. O'Brien gave him a pair of leather gloves that she had made, and while they were very nice, they looked kind of big. "Try them on, dear," she chuckled.

Steve slid them on and gaped as they shifted and molded themselves perfectly to his hands.

"Perfect fit," she said with a smile. "Waterproof too, and sturdy. That leather won't crack or wear thin. Just the thing to protect those hands of yours when you're out doing whatever those dangerous things are that you do."

Steve smiled. "Thank you."

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes gave him a long, flat wooden box, the insides lined with felt and divided into sections containing a staggering variety of pencils, inks, brushes, pens, pastels and sticks of charcoal, all of much nicer quality than Steve could usually afford.

From Bucky, there was a new toolkit, everything he would need to work on his bike made out of metal infused with a charm that would keep each tool from dulling or breaking.

Becky gave him a little light in a box, like the one she had made for Bucky. "I love you, Steve," she said, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. "Happy birthday."

After the party had cleared up, it was time to get things ready for the cookout, but Mrs. Barnes brought him a couple of things that had arrived in the mail for him. The first was a gift from Peggy. She'd sent him a compass, small and compact, that would fit perfectly on the belt of his uniform. It carried a charm so that, instead of pointing north, it pointed to where you were trying to go.

The other was a letter from the S.S.R., like the one Bucky had gotten, informing him of the increase in pay he would be receiving to reflect the fact that he was an adult now. He'd half been expecting that. What he hadn't been expecting were the two silver Captain's bars that fell out of the envelope into his hand. Yeah, he was the team leader, and yeah, Bucky had gotten an official promotion to Sergeant when he turned seventeen, but Captain was just so…He shook his head. Wow. He sat there for a while, just staring at them. Having the nickname was one thing, but actually being a Captain now…That was a _huge_ honor. He hoped he could live up to it.

"Congratulations, Stevie," Bucky said from behind him. He was smiling at him proudly. "You deserve it."

The rest of the day was filled with holiday celebrations and evening fireworks. Steve and Bucky sat up on the roof for a long time, watching the lights exploding across the sky until the last of the colors faded. They went inside then, and Steve went to tidy some of his things up while Bucky went and took a shower. There was a knock on the door, and Steve looked up from placing his new gloves in his school trunk to see Mrs. Barnes standing in the doorway.

"I hope you've had a good birthday, dear," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am," Steve replied. "Thank you again for the party, and the gift and everything. It was great."

"I'm glad," she said. "There, ah, there was one more gift for you," she said, pulling a small, flat box out of the pocket of her cardigan. "I thought you might not want the attention of the whole room when you opened it." She held the box out. "It's from your mother."

Steve's breath caught in his throat. "My ma?" he rasped, reaching forward gingerly to accept the box.

Mrs. Barnes nodded. "While she was in the hospital, she…Before you got there, she asked me…" She seemed a little lost for words. "Why don't you just open it?" she said, smiling gently.

Steve looked down and carefully unfolded the piece of paper taped to the top of the box. Moisture sprang to his eyes when he saw the words written there in familiar, gracefully curving letters. They were a little less neat than they should have been—she had already been sick when she wrote this, and her hand must have been shaking. But it was his ma's handwriting.

'My dear Steve,' it said. 'I can't believe you're already seventeen. It seems like only yesterday you were a tiny little baby, curled up asleep in my arms. I've thought about this day for a long time, and I'm so sorry I can't be there to celebrate it with you, sweetheart. I hope it was wonderful, and I hope you know how much you are loved. I don't know what sort of things you're doing now, or what the past few years of your life have been like, and it breaks my heart to have to miss it all, but, Steve, whatever it is you're doing, I know that you have grown into a kind, wonderful, strong young man. I am so very proud of you. So proud. I love you so much, baby, and even though I'm not there with you anymore, that isn't going to change. Happy seventeenth birthday, Steve. All my love, forever and ever, Mama.'

Steve sniffed and dashed the tears from his eyes. Those were the last words his ma had said to him in the hospital too, that she loved him. Carefully, he peeled up the tape holding the note down and laid the letter reverently on top of his dresser.

The box in his hands was old, battered on the corners, and whatever color it may have once been, it was now a dull gray. The top stuck a little bit before sliding off. Folded up inside was a faded piece of green silk, and nestled in the middle was a silver hunter-case watch. The outer edge of the cover was engraved with a thin ring of tiny interlocking Celtic knots, though it was so scuffed that some of the design had worn away. Steve picked it up carefully, setting the box down by the letter. Despite the battered edges, the watch felt smooth, cool and heavy in his palm. It opened easily, and time stopped completely, the world dead silent, as Steve read the name carved in simple, elegant letters on the inside of the case.

"Grant Rogers," he breathed, once he finally remembered how. "This was…" He looked up at Mrs. Barnes. "This was my dad's?"

She nodded.

Steve looked back down at the watch. This had belonged to his father. It had sat in his father's hand just the way it was sitting in his. He ghosted two fingers across the name carved there. His dad had touched this, held it in his hands, wound it and set it. He'd carried it into battle, keeping time as he fought in the trenches, and it got scratched and scarred right along with him, and kept going just like he did. Down by the hinge, a tiny dark spot marred the otherwise smooth silver interior. It looked like old, dried glue, and Steve could imagine his father placing a picture of his mother inside before he left for the war. His father. This was his father's.

"This was my dad's," he said again, all he could say.

"I hope you don't mind that we waited to give it to you," Mrs. Barnes said. "Your mother asked me to save it for—"

That was as far as she got before Steve stepped forward and flung his arms around her. She hugged him back warmly, tucking his head in against her neck as he cried into her shoulder. "Thank you," he whispered. He was so happy, so sad, so overwhelmed that it hurt, and there was so much he should say and nothing at all he _could_ say. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she whispered back. She hugged him closer, cradling his head with one hand and kissing the side of his face. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

* * *

_Aaaw. Something nice and sweet, because these guys deserve to have things go easy for a little while. _

_In case you were wondering what book Steve and Peggy were discussing, it's Agatha Christie's (SPOILER WARNING for a 94-year-old book) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. My reaction to the twist was the same as Steve's. _

_I'd love to hear what you're thinking so far! See you Monday!_


	66. Just This Once, Everybody Lives

_A little bit more time at home, and then our boys are off to start their 7th and last year of school. With Kendall out of the way, hopefully things will get off to a good start.  
_

_(The title of this one is a line from the Christopher Eccleston Dr. Who episode, 'The Doctor Dances'.)_

* * *

Most of their summer at home passed quietly, with only two major events taking place. The first was the announcement of Kendall's trial, set to take place in London at the beginning of August. Bucky and Steve each received letters from Phillips detailing how they would get there and what sort of questions they should be prepared to answer. Those letters were followed by two more cancelling the whole thing—Kendall was dead, and very violently so, murdered in his cell through some Hydra connection that had yet to be investigated. Steve was furious that Kendall wouldn't be facing justice, but, and it might have been wrong of him, but Bucky couldn't bring himself to feel too upset about it. After all the death that Kendall had caused, being murdered by his own people felt like its own kind of justice.

The second major event was far less relevant to the war effort, but had a great deal of impact on Bucky nonetheless. His ma came home from work at the post office one day and brought him a letter from Vicki. He'd gotten a couple from her over the course of the summer, but he knew she'd been busy setting things up after finishing school. According to this letter, though, she'd finally gotten her applications and test scores and everything squared away and had been accepted into a Healer training program. And she was…

"Whoa," he breathed, making sure he'd read the letter right. "Vicki's coming to New York."

"What?" Steve asked, looking up from his sketchpad.

Bucky tapped the letter. "She got top scores on her tests and got to pick which program she wanted to go into." He smiled. "She's coming to St. Clement's."

"Because she _looooves_ him," Becky declared from where she'd evidently been hanging over the back of the couch and reading the letter over his shoulder. "I've missed you and I can't wait to see you!" she read in a weirdly frilly voice that was apparently supposed to sound like Vicki. "I—"

"Stop reading my mail," Bucky said, rolling up the letter and smacking her in the head with it.

She snickered and dropped onto the seat of the couch with a _thump_, rolling away as he swatted at her with the letter again.

"When does she get here?" Steve asked over the sound of Becky making kissing noises from the other end of the couch.

"Next week," Bucky said, throwing a pillow at his sister and hitting her squarely in the face.

"Hey, you should invite her to the dance at the church that weekend," Steve suggested.

"No, he shouldn't!" Becky protested, popping up from underneath the pillow.

"Why not?" Bucky wondered. "I thought you liked Vicki."

"I do, but you can't…It's the competition, remember? You and me are supposed to dance then. You can't bring a date," she complained.

"Aw, Munchkin, are you jealous?" Bucky teased.

"No," she huffed. "But I don't want you getting all tired from dancing with your girlfriend and then not doing good for the competition."

Bucky laughed and reached over and grabbed her ankle, dragging her back across the couch as she squeaked in protest. "Hey, I already told you I'd dance with you, didn't I?" She nodded. "So, don't worry about it. I'll dance with you first and we'll knock 'em dead. I'll dance with her after that."

"Oh. Well, okay, you can invite her, then."

"Thank you," Bucky said, still chuckling.

He _did_ invite her to the dance, though as the evening got closer, he found himself a little nervous about it. He'd never actually danced with Vicki before. It wasn't as though there was much opportunity at school. The Yule Ball would have been his only option for it, but it had been canceled after the fighting started like a lot of things had. Not only was he going to get to dance with her for the first time, but…oh. Everyone was going to be there. Vicki was going to meet his parents. That was slightly terrifying for reasons he couldn't quite articulate. He swallowed nervously and adjusted his tie. It would be fine. Well, he amended as his sister's laugh drifted down the hall, it _should_ be fine. Steve and Becky had _better_ behave themselves.

Vicki met them at the church and greeted him with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. He introduced her to his parents and she smiled and chatted smoothly and politely and seemed much less worried about the whole thing than he did. Counting the other guys she'd dated, maybe she'd met boyfriends' parents before.

"So, what brought you to New York to study?" his ma asked.

"Well," Vicki said with a smile. "I'm hoping to go into Psychology with an emphasis on trauma care. Adriana Wilson is in charge of the program here, and she's one of the best Healers in the field." She smiled wider. "It didn't hurt that Bucky was here too," she added.

Bucky's ma laughed and Bucky felt his cheeks going red.

"I'm looking forward to seeing you dance," Vicki told him as he showed her to the seating area. "I've heard you're good. And if you move anything like you do on the Quidditch pitch…"

"So, no pressure, then," Bucky said with a grin.

"None at all." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Good luck. And don't wear yourself out too much. You've got to save at least one dance for me."

The competition started, and after a final admonition from Becky to pay attention to his footwork and not his girlfriend, they got going. He and Becky had been practicing all summer, trying out some new, more daring moves, and it paid off when they were awarded the blue ribbon at the end.

"We did it, Jay, we did it, we did it!" Becky squealed, jumping up and down and hugging him tightly.

"You bet we did!" he agreed, hugging her back and kissing the side of her head. "Good job, Munchkin!"

After catching his breath and getting something to drink, he danced the rest of the evening with Vicki. She was pretty good too, and Bucky wished he'd gotten an opportunity to do this with her before now. It was pretty great.

He saw her a few more times over the summer—she _was_ pretty busy with her program, but she could usually find time on the weekends for an afternoon out or dinner at the apartment. She enjoyed getting a chance to see his favorite places around town, and he enjoyed hearing about her work, even if he didn't understand all of it—she clearly was loving it, and that was great.

The end of the summer came up awfully quickly, and it hit Bucky with a jolt as he got on the train that he was entering his last year. He didn't…yeah, he was seventeen, but he didn't think he felt grown-up enough for that yet.

Classes picked up as usual, with the reminders from all of his teachers that they would be sitting their N.E.W.T.'s this year, so they needed to start off strong.

"We've been back in class for an _hour_," Steve complained. "And the N.E.W.T.'s have come up three times. This is gonna be even worse than our O.W.L. year."

Their first Potions class was before lunch, and they got to meet the new teacher Phillips had gotten lined up, an elderly woman named Professor Kane who sort of reminded Bucky of the few memories he had of his grandmother.

"So, what do we think?" Jim asked as they left the class. "Hydra agent?"

"Doubtful," Bucky replied. "Phillips had to have vetted the hell out of her."

"True," Jim agreed. "And she only assigned us two chapters to read tonight, so that's a plus in my book."

"You think Kendall gave us so much homework because he enjoyed seeing us suffer?" Steve wondered.

"Well, he couldn't kill us, so he had to do _something_," Peggy pointed out.

The next couple of days were fairly normal. People were still talking about Kendall, but at least they had stopped bothering the Howlies about it. Professor Marsh was back and teaching again, though she was now sporting an artificial leg.

"Guess Kendall got her pretty good, huh?" Gabe said with a growl. After Erskine had died, Marsh had taken over as the Ravenclaw Head of House.

"It's real hard to notice, though," Dugan said.

"Well, sure," Jim allowed. "She doesn't want people talking about it. That's probably why she didn't bring it up."

The talk turned then to more pleasant things, and when the bell rang to signal the end of lunch, Peggy reminded them all to keep on top of their homework, since they were hitting the ground running this term. There was a meeting on Wednesday just to get back into the swing of things, then a planning session the week after that and a new mission the following Friday—another factory run with the 107th and 89th. Bucky was looking forward to something straightforward for a change—just go in there and blow things the hell up. He was also looking forward to having the element of surprise back, and not having to worry about their cover being blown from the inside.

They apparated into the Netherlands on the day of the mission, and they had a little bit of a hike from the safe zone to get to the factory before dark. Recon showed standard defenses, no one looking like they were on the alert or expecting an attack. There were a couple of Dementors roaming the perimeter, but those had been pretty standard for a while now. The teams were ready for them.

"Aw, hey, look," Dugan said, pointing at the fence. "They're trying a new defensive spell. That's cute."

"Bless," said Patrick, the 107th's curse guy. He flicked his wand at the fence in tandem with Dugan and there was a faint popping sound. "They should get marks for trying, anyway."

"Jim, you good on your side?" Steve said into his radio. Jim was on the other side of the factory doing the same thing Dugan was.

"We're clear, Cap," he replied.

"Two minutes," Steve told him. He looked at the guys gearing up around him. "Colin, you feeling okay about your new guys?" he asked quietly. The Fifth-Year volunteers who'd signed up had been doing some intensive training over the summer, but this was the first mission they were going on.

"They'll do alright," Colin assured him. "I wouldn't've let them come, otherwise."

Steve nodded, and Colin turned back to his team to give some last-minute instructions. "Something up, Steve?" Bucky wondered.

Steve shrugged. "Just, you know, new guys. And they're all…" He looked them over. "They're all really little."

Bucky chuckled. "Steve, everybody looks little to you. And they're fifteen. Which is only two years younger than you, and remind me how old you were when you started this again?"

"Shut up," Steve complained. "I just—"

"I know what you meant," Bucky said. "Yes, they do feel young, but Colin was right, they had to earn their way here. And we'll keep an eye on them." It _did_ make Bucky kind of uneasy, thinking about the new Fifth-Years being here. They just seemed so young, even though he knew he'd been right where they were two years ago. But there wasn't much they could do but keep an eye on them.

"We'll make sure they're alright," he assured Steve. "But you don't spend all your brain power worrying about them. Keep your head in the game."

"Right," Steve agreed. He drew in a deep breath and squared back his shoulders. "You ready to raise a little hell?" he asked with a smirk.

Bucky grinned. "Say the word, Captain."

They burst through the fence like a tidal wave, the Howling Commandos living up to their name, and Bucky had to smile a little bit when he noticed a couple of the 107th guys joining in. The Hydra guards around the perimeter had clearly not been expecting anything, and, oh, it felt good to be back in the driver's seat for these things! The 107th soon had a path cleared for them across the yard, and he and Steve and Dugan met up with the rest of the team and the 89th guys coming from the other side. Rather than fight their way through the door where enemy soldiers were lined up waiting for them, they took out a chunk of the wall instead, taking a few Hydra guys down in the process and regaining the element of surprise.

Like most of the other factories, they split up on the work floor—the 89th off to rescue prisoners, and Dugan, Monty and Jacques running off to lay explosives. Gabe and Jim hit the administrative level looking for intel, and Bucky and Steve stayed on the ground floor to fight off any trouble.

He and Steve fought back to back, making sure all angles were covered that way. Bucky could hear the almost musical pinging sound of spells bouncing off Steve's shield, accented by the occasional sharp snap of a bullet. By now, Bucky was familiar with the soft whining noise those Tesseract guns made before they fired, and he grabbed Steve's arm and spun him around so that they switched places. Steve didn't fight the turn, just kept his shield up, and it blocked the wave of deadly energy that Bucky's shield spell wouldn't have. The shield spell _was_ good for the bullets and spells still coming from the other side, though, so Bucky kept it up, and extended it when he heard Steve grunt and fling his shield off in the direction the energy had come from.

"You get him?" he asked when he heard the shield smack back into Steve's hand.

"Yep," Steve replied. "Left around the compressor." He spun off to the right and Bucky spun off to the left, rounding the large compressor unit and catching seven guys between him and Steve at the other end. He shot a couple of spells into the melee, then flung out a hand as Steve's shield came ricocheting back and forth between the walls of machinery, catching two of the Hydra soldiers in the head as it went. Bucky knew better than to try to catch the thing, but he snagged one of the leather straps that went around Steve's arm, spun in a tight circle that would've knocked 'em dead at the swing dance competition, and sent the shield flying back to Steve. They'd been practicing that, and the goal was just to return the shield to Steve, but Bucky managed to nail another Hydra guy with it too.

"Nice!" Steve yelled, snatching the shield out of midair and shooting Bucky a thumbs-up before bringing that arm back with a crunch that Bucky could hear into the face of the guy trying to sneak up on him.

When they cleared that row, they were back out on the floor, and Bucky took a quick scan of the room to make sure no one was sneaking up on Dugan and Jacques and Monty. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Steve grunt and double over as something caught him in the midsection, and he jumped to cover him. "You okay?"

" 'm good," Steve said, taking a second, but straightening back up. "Just winded me." Bucky nodded and waited until Steve had his shield back up before dropping his.

They fought and they punched and they cursed and hexed and kicked and spun, and what with the last couple terms and all, it had been such a long time that Bucky had felt like they were winning _anything_ that this felt pretty great.

"We're heading for the yard, Captain!" Ethan's voice came over the radio.

"Monty, how we doing?" Steve called.

"Two more to set—start clearing everyone out!" came the reply.

Steve caught Bucky's eye and nodded at the door. "Go. I got it."

The end of the mission was always the messiest, like the Hydra soldiers got more desperate once the prisoners started getting out. Bucky was supposed to go cover the escape and help the guys in the yard out, and he hated to leave Steve here on his own, but Gabe and Jim were coming down to join him now, and somebody had to keep an eye on all the new little guys outside.

Bucky nodded and ran for the door, hopping up a stack of boxes and landing lightly on the roof of a shed. He pulled his rifle off his back and lay down—he had a great view of the yard from up here. Nothing was happening over by the door the prisoners should be coming out of, so he kneecapped a guy fighting with Colin and took out one more that was fighting one of the new guys that might have been named Chris before returning his attention to the door.

Ethan and Michael appeared, Ethan taking up a position by the door and Michael leading the prisoners toward the break in the fence. Bucky watched them as they went, firing at anyone who made a move to stop them. He watched for several seconds more after the last of them disappeared into the darkness, then pulled back to reload and turn back to the big fight.

He rolled to the side and hunched down on the roof as a bullet came whizzing past his head, then he heard a rough, heavy tumbling sound and a thump as a Hydra guard fell off the main roof of the factory above him, landing in a lifeless heap on the ground below. Bucky's eyes darted back in the direction the bullet had come from, and he saw Ethan lowering his gun. Bucky nodded in thanks and Ethan grinned and shot a salute at him before vanishing into the dark after the prisoners.

Bucky turned back to the fight, and, you know, it was a good thing these new guys were little, because he could shoot right over their heads and get a headshot nearly every time on the Hydra soldiers. It took a couple of shots to take down the absolutely massive guy that appeared from behind a truck. He was even bigger than Steve, and who the hell had let that little Fifth-Year he was fighting in here, because Bucky was pretty sure Becky was taller than that kid. The big guy went down, and Bucky turned his attention to the crowd ganging up on Roland and Colin, but between every shot his eyes kept going back and trying to find that little guy. He seemed to be holding his own, but Bucky kept checking, and he felt his mouth drop open when some kind of green fire came flying out of the little guy's wand, sending four Hydra soldiers flying through the air and crashing back down into motionless heaps on the ground. The little guy punched the air, and Bucky could hear his triumphant crow from here.

"Not bad, little fella," he said with a grin.

The kid turned back to the fight and so did Bucky, and then Steve was yelling through the radios for them to clear the yard. Bucky stayed up on the roof a few seconds longer, covering the 107th as they retreated, then slid down and darted after them.

He joined up with Steve and Gabe, watching their six as they headed for the fence. "Everybody out?" Steve called into the radio. Unit leaders all called back that they were clear, and Steve yelled, "Light it up!"

The moonless night was awash in orange firelight as the explosion shook the air. Someone off in the trees—probably Dugan, because it was usually Dugan—started howling, and the rest of the Howlies joined in. Bucky cupped his hands around his mouth and joined the cacophony, and even Steve let out a couple of quick howls.

"Alright, regroup and count up," Steve ordered once the noise had died down. Everyone had reported clear of the building, but they still needed a headcount. "I want a full count—casualty, wounded and walking—before anyone starts transporting. Security, give us a perimeter, and medics, check in with your leaders and then get to work."

Everyone got to work, and Bucky took over taking headcount while Steve coordinated with Security. The Howlies were all present and accounted for, and Michael reported that the 89th had several wounded, but no casualties. "107th, what you got?" Bucky asked, walking over to where Colin's team was gathered.

"Eight wounded, still counting," Colin said. "Charlie's patching people up, but, listen, you know about those Coleman guns, yeah?"

After Paris, the S.S.R. had tried to track down as many of Eric Coleman's hybrid guns as they could, but black marketeers tended not to keep the most accurate of records, and they knew there was no way they'd gotten them all. There had been missions reporting seeing them crop up since.

"Yeah, I mean, a little," Bucky replied. "Why? Were there some here?"

"I saw at least two in action tonight, and I think that's what this third one was that got Alfie. Can you have a look?"

"Sure," Bucky said, though he didn't really know what he'd be able to do. "Aw, man," he breathed, stepping into the firelight. Alfie turned out to be the little guy with the green fire—he must've gotten caught on the way out—and he was clamping his teeth down hard on the strap of Charlie's medical bag and trying not to scream.

"Nothing's working," Charlie told Bucky. He'd been promoted from back-up medic since Donovan left and was looking a little harried. "Have you seen this one before? It's like his leg is on fire."

A little bit of the sick knot in Bucky's stomach untwisted and he smiled reassuringly, because, no, he didn't know how to fix it, but he at least knew how to make it stop hurting. "Yeah, I got it. _Sine Sensu_," he said, and the kid almost fell over as he sagged down in relief.

"Thanks," Alfie breathed.

"No problem," Bucky told him, clapping a hand to his shoulder. He looked over at Charlie. "You'll need a Healer to get that out, but he'll be okay until then."

Charlie nodded, shooting him a grateful smile. "Thanks."

"Um, am I not meant to be able to move it?" Alfie asked quietly.

"Yeah, sorry, that's the only way I know how to make it stop hurting," Bucky told him. "But don't worry. Same thing happened to me, and I'm walking again. You'll be alright."

A relieved smile flitted across Alfie's face. "Okay, good. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Bucky replied. He grinned. "And I saw that thing you did with the green fire back there. Hell of a spell, man!"

"Told you the new lads could look after themselves," Colin told him proudly. "When I saw that in training, he was the first one I picked." Alfie blushed, but was smiling.

"You're gonna go places, kid," Bucky told him. "You good if I leave you here? I've got to finish counting people."

"I'll be alright. Thank you, Sergeant."

Bucky smiled. "Call me Bucky."

"Wow, really?" The kid was beaming. "Thank you, Bucky."

Bucky nodded, a little thrown off by the enthusiasm, and moved away to finish counting. "Oh, come on," Colin said as they walked away. "Don't act all surprised. You're Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos." He bumped Bucky with his elbow. "You're nearly as famous as the good Captain."

He winked and chuckled and moved away, and Bucky decided to just finish counting people and not worry about how weird someone thinking he was famous was.

He was smiling when he got back to Steve. "You got a count?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Twenty-three wounded on the teams, a hundred and seventeen wounded out of three hundred and sixteen prisoners, but there's no fatalities." He grinned. "Steve, nobody died."

Steve blinked. "Nobody died?"

"We're all here," Bucky told him. There hadn't been a zero-fatality mission in, well, thanks to Kendall, in quite a while.

"We're all here," Steve repeated. He laughed, then grabbed Bucky and hugged him. "We're all here!" he said again.

"Ha!" Dugan crowed from behind them. "Take that, Hydra!"

They were a jubilant group that returned to Hogsmeade. Phillips met them in town, like he usually did after factory runs, to help get the prisoners figured out. Though he seemed less than impressed by the boys' enthusiasm, Bucky still caught a twinkle in his eye.

Since it was still fairly early in the evening, once the wounded were seen to, several of them stayed down at the Three Broomsticks to celebrate. Music was playing, and some of the tables were cleared out of the middle to make some room to dance. There weren't a lot of girls around to dance with, but people were still having a good time. Bucky endured some good-natured ribbing after declining to join the other guys who were of age in a celebratory drink—the smell of the alcohol still turned his stomach. He grabbed a couple of sodas and sat at one of the remaining tables with Steve, who had also taken some teasing after the face he made when he tried a sip of Firewhiskey.

Bucky smiled. "Good job tonight, Stevie," he said, clinking his bottle against Steve's.

"You too," Steve replied. He grinned. "We really all made it out."

"We really did," Bucky agreed, still a little awed by the fact.

It was a loud and cheerful evening. Bucky found himself dragged into a dance-off against Monty and Jim, and Monty was no competition, but Jim gave him a run for his money. He bowed to the round of applause he received when it got to midnight and Phillips declared that all the students needed to head back up to school, whether they were of age or not.

Peggy had come down at some point with Phillips, and she was walking back up with Steve now, holding hands in the starlight and talking softly. Bucky didn't want to crash their evening, so he hung back with Jacques until Steve told Peggy goodnight at the stairs leading up to her dorm.

"Didn't see you out there on the floor tonight, Steve," Bucky said, nudging his friend's arm as they walked back to the dorm.

Steve shrugged. "Yeah, well, I…I don't really know how to dance, you know?"

"I doubt Peggy minds," Bucky said.

"No, I know, I just…" He shrugged again. "Okay, maybe it sounds dumb, but I don't want our first dance to be me messing up and stepping all over her feet with all those people watching."

"No, that's fair enough," Bucky agreed. "You want me to teach you how sometime?"

Steve considered. "Yeah," he nodded. "Sometime. I think that would be a good idea." He smiled, blushing a little. "I would like to dance with her someday."

Steve and Peggy did always take things slow. Bucky smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, we'll fix your footwork up, and then someday you will."

* * *

_Hope you guys have a great week! I'll see you Friday! In the meantime, I'd love it if you stopped and dropped a note to let me know how you're enjoying the story._


	67. Schmidt's Warning

_Things have been going well for our heroes for a little while now. One can imagine a certain red-faced supervillain is not particularly pleased about that...  
_

* * *

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. Steve took off Saturday afternoon and rode his bike around for a while. Not with Peggy this time—he loved riding with her, but after missions, no matter how well or badly they'd gone, he liked to get out on his own and clear his head a little. When he was out there, he thought back often to the night after his first mission, sitting in the common room with Bucky and both of them trying to wrap their heads around taking lives and how to live with that. It had hurt then, and it still hurt now, and Bucky had been right then, it always should. But Bucky had been right, too, that even though it never got easier, they _did_ get better at making peace with it. Being out alone in the world like this helped Steve's soul to settle, to get his eyes on that big picture of why he was doing this and the good things that were out there that made the fight worth it.

He made it back in time for dinner and caught up with Bucky at the Hufflepuff table. His knuckles were scraped and bloody in spots—Steve sought out contemplative solitude after a mission, but the punching bags were where Bucky got things figured out.

"Good ride?" Bucky asked him.

"Yeah," Steve replied. "No gloves this time?" Sometimes if the mission had been a rough one, Bucky would do his punching bare-knuckled, but Steve didn't think anything had happened on this mission to bring that on.

Bucky smiled, knowing what Steve was asking. "All the ones in my size were taken. Tape kept slipping off," he added, gesturing with the hand that had more blood on it.

Satisfied that nothing was wrong, Steve changed the subject. "How's that kid, Alfie, doing?"

"He's good," Bucky replied. "He's got a couple of days before he can walk again, but he'll be fine." He grinned. "I went up and checked on him after lunch, and he's already cranky about having to spend the next few days in bed. Reminds me of this other tough little guy I used to know."

Steve snorted. "You'd think I was the devil the way you complain about what I'm like when I'm sick."

"Have you met you when you're sick?" Bucky countered.

Steve responded by throwing a chunk of potato at him.

The next little while, mission-wise, was very quiet. They found a second factory in Italy and took that out, but otherwise, things were calm. There was nothing urgent that required their attention, and Phillips was still very meticulously going over all the lines of communication and contacts and informants he had, trying to figure out how much damage Kendall had done and what needed fixing and who could be trusted.

It was kind of weird, not doing anything, and Steve felt a little restless about it, like he was waiting for something bad to happen out there while they were just hanging out here. At the same time, though, the break was nice. He had time to do his homework, he had time to sit out by the lake with Peggy, he had time to join Bucky in teasing Becky about this Mickey kid she started going out with (and discreetly checking up on him to make sure he was a good guy)…He had time to sleep. Sleeping was nice. He kind of missed it when they were going all the time.

Now that Kendall was out of the way, more S.S.R. people were able to take over in looking through the stuff they'd brought back from Schmidt's house—what with the trial being set up and cancelled and everything, no one had had a lot of time to devote to it over the summer—and that was good, because most of it was too technical for Steve's team to make much out of. It was still pretty neat to look through, though. Steve did wonder at what point in his life Schmidt had gotten so bad, or if he'd always been that way. Some of this stuff he was coming up with was pretty impressive and could have some applications that actually helped people—if only he wasn't an evil, tyrannical nutjob.

"You boys ready for another job?" Peggy asked when they gathered at their usual Wednesday meeting.

"Please," Dugan pleaded dramatically.

"Poor guy hasn't blown anything up since Italy," Gabe pointed out.

"And he's got nothing to do but homework now," Monty added.

Peggy smirked. "How do you feel about a mine?"

"I have reservations about missions in mines," Steve said.

"This one's been active for a while," Peggy said with a smile. "No giant snakes."

"Alright," Steve said skeptically. "Whatcha got?"

"I'm afraid it is in France," she said apologetically, and Steve groaned. "But it's a naquadah mine."

Jim let out a low, impressed whistle. "Did you say naquadah?" Peggy nodded. "Whoa."

"Qu'est-ce que naquadah?" Jacques asked.

"It's one of the other metals that conducts energy," Dugan told him. "Both magical and not. Not as rare as vibranium," he said, hooking a thumb at Steve. "But it's up there. Expensive as hell, too."

Gabe looked up at Peggy. "Are we gonna steal a naquadah mine from Hydra?"

"Yes, although, technically, they stole it from us first." She looked over at Steve. "Howard uses a lot of naquadah in his designs. That's one of the reasons we want it back. Our main concern, though, is this," she said, unrolling one of the blueprints from their raid of Schmidt's house. "This is an engine that's connected to the Valkyrie in some way. Whatever the Valkyrie is, it's big, and this is too small to power the whole thing. But because of the naquadah, this engine can go a long way on very little fuel, and the design is oddly dangerously conductive. This thing will explode with very little provocation, and if you add some sort of bomb on top of that…Howard thinks it's designed for some sort of mass destruction kamikaze mission."

"Okay, so, that's bad," Steve sighed. "So, we cut them off, but how do we know they can't get more?"

"Like Dugan said, there's not a lot of it around. What there is is very tightly controlled. If we can get this one away from them and back under our control, it becomes extremely difficult for them to get more."

They got down to the business of planning, and Steve tried to swallow down the knot of apprehension in his stomach. They were going to France _and_ they were going underground, and it was just superstition, he knew that, but he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling entirely. They couldn't not go, though. Hydra was bad enough without kamikaze machines. Then there was the whole fighting over resources thing too. Like the diamonds in South Africa or the Tesseract, Steve knew naquadah had more than just destructive uses, but he knew that was all anyone wanted it for. But, then, leaving something like that in the hands of Hydra was not an option either.

"You okay?" Bucky asked as they left the planning session.

Steve sighed. "This whole thing sucks."

Bucky nodded. He shared Steve's feelings about magical energy sources and the war. "Although, at least if we have the stuff and our side is making weapons out of it, it's got to be better than Hydra doing the same thing."

Steve nodded. "I still don't like it, though."

"Me neither."

"We can't let them get what they need for those engines, though," Steve said.

"So, let's go to France," Bucky sighed.

Though not everyone on the team shared Steve's misgivings about what would happen with the naquadah after the S.S.R. got it back, they _did_ all share his concern about going to back to France. They loaded up on protective and defensive charms, armed themselves to the teeth, and Jim's medical bag and Monty's weapons bag were full to bursting.

They apparated into an area of the French Alps that was currently not under Grindelwald's control, which meant magical transportation was a little bit freer. Nazis did still have this part of France, but they weren't as worried about them. It was a couple hours' hike to the mine. Since magical transport in the area was unmonitored, the Hydra guys could come and go freely from the mine, but Jim and Dugan weren't sure how far out they might have cast their defenses, so they gave themselves a wide berth to be safe.

When they did reach the magical boundary line, they took a lot of care in examining it and finding a way in. Steve knew Jim was still sore about their meddling being detected in Romania, so he was being extra careful this time. When they finally decided they knew what to do, Jim and Dugan touched their wands to the air where the barrier began, and a hazy golden glow appeared, marking where the spell was. A hole about six feet tall appeared in the haze, and Jim ushered them through it, he and Dugan keeping their wands touching the wall the whole time. They had to do a complicated sort of twist and turn for both of them to get inside while keeping their wands on the barrier, but they managed, and the hole snapped shut behind them.

"Okay," Steve said. "Stay sharp." They moved forward quietly, Jacques sneaking up ahead to be lookout, Steve watching the forest in front of them and Bucky watching their six. Jacques came back to steer them around a pack of wolves he'd spotted up ahead, but otherwise they made it to the mine unimpeded.

With just the one entrance, getting in was going to be tricky. They'd debated for a while on Wednesday the pros and cons of drawing them out of the mine and fighting in the open, but ultimately decided against it—the woods were _too_ open, and if they could keep the fight contained, they had a better chance of getting everyone without someone escaping and calling for reinforcements. And one of the benefits of _re_capturing territory was that the S.S.R. already had maps of this mine, so they knew what was in there. They just had to get in.

Bucky and Jacques fanned out to take the guards outside. Once they came back and reported the area clear, Monty moved forward, pulling out from his weapons bag a little satchel full of curse bombs. He slunk into the entrance as far as he dared, then set them rolling into the entry cavern. He ran out quickly, and there was surprisingly little noise, just a cloud of blue mist that floated out of the entrance that he warned them to keep well clear of.

When he decided it was safe, they moved in. All seven guards were down, and looked to be in the grip of various unpleasant curses. They immobilized and tied up the ones who were still alive, then set a barrier spell across the entrance so no one could sneak up on them. Noise further down the mine shaft told them their entrance had not gone entirely unnoticed.

They waited for their attackers to come to them instead of rushing to meet them in the narrow corridor. There was better light here in the front, and more room to maneuver. The crowd of men that appeared from deeper in the mine seemed to be a mixture of Hydra soldiers and miners. They fought the Hydra soldiers with everything they had, but their plan for the miners was to incapacitate, not kill. Peggy had suspected that most of them were locals or some of the former mine workers, forced through curses and threats to keep working. Steve recognized several sets of the glassy eyes that came from trying and failing to fight off the Imperious Curse.

"Whoa!" he shouted, ducking down and raising his shield. The guy in front of him may have been fighting against his will, but that wouldn't matter if that pickaxe of his came down on Steve's skull.

This was the weirdest fight Steve had ever been in. Everyone was trying to kill them, but fighting with the non-magical miners felt more like one of the brawls in the courtyard at school—lots of punching and kicking and biting. Well, it felt like a schoolyard brawl with pickaxes and shovels and sledgehammers added in. Add in the Hydra soldiers who were shooting spells to kill, and Steve really had to stay on his toes.

He quickly realized too that the Hydra guys were unconcerned about the fate of the miners, not even flinching if one of them got caught in the path of a spell intended for a Howling Commando. So now he was fighting miners and trying to shield them at the same time. "Seriously, lay off with the sledgehammer, man!" he snapped at a guy who was determinedly trying to shatter Steve's femur. He used his shield to block a curse that would have caught sledgehammer-guy in the chest, then swung the shield around and clocked him in the head. "Trying to save your life here."

Three of the Hydra soldiers converged on Steve, and their spells were coming at him so fast he felt like he was dancing trying to avoid them. He flung his shield out in their direction, and as soon as it left his hand, something hard and heavy smashed into the back of his head and sent him to the floor. Two of the miners—oh, no, wait, that was just one of them, he was seeing double after that blow—one of the miners was standing over him with a shovel, and it took Steve longer than it should have to realize he needed to roll out of the way because the pointy end was coming down toward his chest. He made it out of the way just in time, and he didn't think his brain could get him on his feet yet so he swept out with a leg, taking down shovel-guy and swinging the foot back around again to kick him in the side of the head and knock him out.

Hands were on his arm and the harnesses on his uniform and he was back up on his feet again. "Steve, are you okay? Your head's bleeding," Bucky said worriedly.

"I'm fine, I—get down!" he yelled and Bucky dropped, and Steve wasn't sure where his shield was but his fingers found the shovel that had almost killed him and he swung it at the Hydra soldier that had been coming up behind Bucky, and, wow, that wasn't a vibration-free shovel was it? Not like his shield was, 'cause he felt that all the way up his arm, but it took the guy down pretty good, and, wait, Bucky was saying something, what was he talking about?

"Steve, stop talking about shovels and sit down," Bucky told him.

"Still fighting," Steve protested, nodding out at what was anywhere from ten to forty guys, depending on what his vision was doing. Either way, the fight was still happening.

"Steve, I—whoa!" Bucky yanked Steve off to the side and Steve felt the flare of a shield spell springing to life. Someone was shooting fire at them, and Bucky could protect them but not fight back, so Steve hung on to Bucky's shoulder to keep himself balanced and started shooting curses out through the shield at whoever was trying to light them on fire.

"Point th' shield that way," Steve said when they were done, nodding to where Jim was fighting off a soldier and some miners.

Bucky looked over at him skeptically. "How many of Jim do you see right now?"

"Three?" Steve guessed.

Bucky shook his head. "How about you make the shield and _I'll_ shoot at the bad guys? Last thing we need is you taking our medic down."

"Fair 'nough," Steve agreed. "Switch!" He flung up a shield spell of his own, and that was probably a good idea of Bucky's, because shield spells, he was good at and he could do those without thinking, and thinking sort of hurt right now. Bucky started firing curses at the guys fighting Jim, not flinching as bursts of light flared against Steve's shield spell where spells or bullets were trying to hit them.

Steve kept the shield up, but he had to let go of Bucky's shoulder to punch a miner that was coming behind them with a hammer, and seriously, what was with these guys and their hammers? The miner went down and Steve wobbled and just managed to grab Bucky's shoulder again before hitting the floor himself. "Sorry," he muttered, knowing that he'd yanked Bucky off balance. The shield was still up, though.

"You okay?" Bucky replied, shooting a quick glance over at him.

" 'm good," Steve assured him. He decided he should keep the shield up without looking at it so that he could keep a better lookout behind them.

He wasn't sure how much later it was when Bucky said, "Really, Steve, you can drop the shield now. We're good."

"You sure we're done fighting?" Steve asked. He didn't see anyone standing up who shouldn't be, but he could still hear things exploding.

"Yes," Bucky said firmly. "All done. Shield down. Okay, good job. Now, sit down."

"Stop talking in little sentences," Steve complained, lowering himself to the ground. That did feel nice, sitting down. "I'm not stupid."

Bucky huffed a semi-amused laugh. "No, you're not, but you're ignoring all my long sentences."

"What?"

"Sit," Bucky said. "Stay."

Bucky may or may not have walked away, but then he was there and so was Jim, and Jim was taking Steve's helmet off and making him drink something that tasted like milk. As the last of whatever Jim had him drink hit his stomach, it was like someone had flipped all the lights back on and Steve's head felt instantly clear. Jim was crouching in front of him, looking him in the eye. "Better?" he asked.

"Yeah," Steve said, rubbing the back of his head gingerly. "Man, that guy packed a punch! What the hell kind of shovel was that?"

"Naquadah alloy," Jim replied. "It's a pain to dig up, but if you heat it and mix it just right, you can use it to dig the rest of it easier. You're lucky you have that helmet and all that super-juice. I'm surprised it didn't split your skull."

"You're sure he's alright?" Bucky asked.

"He's fine," Jim assured him. "Minor concussion, easy fix. The bone in the back cracked a little, but I got that fused back together."

"Is everybody okay?" Steve asked, looking around.

"Yeah," Jim said. "Hydra guys are down, and we've got the miners knocked out and locked up and waiting for an Auror to come un-curse them." He waved over to where the miners were chained up with the surviving Hydra guards in the corner. "Dugan blocked off the shaft so no one can interrupt us while we're getting ourselves back together," he added, waving to the entrance to the rest of the mine. "You actually weren't the worst injury we had," Jim continued. "Gabe took a good hit with an electric drill, but I got that fixed up before I got to you." Steve shot concerned eyes over in Gabe's direction, but he was up and walking and looking over a map with Jacques. "We're all good and ready to head deeper," Jim finished.

"Okay," Steve said, standing up. "Where's my shield?"

"I got it," Bucky said, picking it up from where it was leaning on the wall and handing it to him. "You sure you're alright?"

"I'm sure." Steve smirked. "I paid attention to all those long sentences of Jim's."

"Punk," Bucky muttered, elbowing him in the side.

They regrouped and repacked their gear and made sure no one that was chained up was going anywhere any time soon, then turned their attention to the mine shaft. That had probably been the largest wave they were going to face, but that didn't mean there wasn't anyone else down here. A quick spell checking for people confirmed that theory, and they set off deeper into the mine.

Most of the people they ran into as they went in farther were more miners, still enchanted, but they didn't seem to have been ordered to attack them. They tied them up anyway, just to be safe. They did come across a few more knots of soldiers, and they took a few more injuries before they got through all of them. Bucky took a curse in the gut that left him white as a sheet and unable to do more than just lie there for a good twenty minutes after Jim fixed him up. Dugan lost a finger that Jacques was able to find quickly enough for Jim to reattach.

"What…" Steve asked as they got going again after everyone was okay. He shivered, like he was trying to dislodge something itchy that had fallen down the back of his shirt. "What is that?"

"You feel it too?" Jim asked. Usually Jim felt the magic in the air before any of the rest of them, but whatever this was was strong. Steve felt like he should be able to hear it humming. "It's the naquadah," Jim explained. "We're deep enough now, it's in the walls around us. It conducts magical energy, remember? And there's been a lot of it flying around."

"Ugh," Steve shuddered. That was a weird feeling.

"It's just humming around," Jim added. "It'll bleed off deeper into the rocks, and if we keep walking, we'll get away from where it's active."

They walked on, coming across one more knot of miners, and three more Hydra soldiers that they were able to take down without getting hurt. They came to what appeared to be a set of very utilitarian living quarters and some sort of office. There wasn't enough room for all the miners to live down here, but it seemed like a place to catch a quick catnap between shifts. The office was a big space but didn't have much more than a telegraph, a radio, and a phone, probably for communicating with people back up at the top.

"I should probably have a look through here," Gabe said, eyeing the office and communication gear. "It's probably just for stuff like asking for medical help in a cave in or stuff like that, but I want to make sure there's nothing important."

"Good idea," Steve agreed. "Monty, Dugan, you guys want to sweep the living quarters?"

"Aye, aye, Captain," Dugan said, shooting him a salute.

It didn't take them long to search the few bedrooms and the kitchen, and they were back before Gabe finished with the desk. "Um, guys?" Jim said. "Is that supposed to be doing that?" He pointed at the telegraph on the side desk. It was clicking quietly and rapidly.

"Maybe it's receiving a message?" Monty said dubiously.

"Not in any language I know," Gabe said, listening to the sounds it was making.

"It's also not plugged in," Bucky pointed out.

"Fall back now," Steve said, not sure what was going on, but sure that it wasn't good. The naquadah had started humming again, stronger than before, and he could feel it in his bones.

"It's a bit late for that, I'm afraid," said a voice that none of them recognized. They whirled around, but no one was standing in the door but Jacques, who'd been guarding it. He was facing them, though, not the hallway, and his eyes were completely white. Steve realized with a jolt that it was him that had spoken—he'd never heard Jacques speak English before. Jacques' lips curled up in a smile that was anything but friendly. "Hello, Captain."

"What the hell?" Bucky whispered.

"Jacques?" Gabe asked nervously.

"I don't think that's Jacques," Jim said.

Jacques, or whoever was in there, smirked. "Very good. And it's…Jim, isn't it?"

"Who are you and what the hell did you do to Jacques?" Steve demanded.

Not-Jacques shrugged. "Just stopping in for a chat. I'm not hurting him. Yet," he added with a smile that made it quite clear he could if wanted to.

"How about you get the hell out of him?" Gabe growled, stepping forward.

"I don't think touching him's a good idea," Dugan said warily, putting hand out to stop Gabe.

"I would listen to Mr. Dugan," the person inside Jacques said. "As I said, I'm not hurting him yet, but…" He shrugged theatrically. "If I feel provoked, who knows what could happen?"

"Who are you?" Steve demanded again.

They all jumped when Monty answered. "Can't you tell?" he asked. The knot that was twisting in Steve's chest turned to lead and dropped into the pit of his stomach. Monty's eyes had gone white too, and he was smirking just like Jacques was.

"We haven't spoken in some time." And now Monty and Jacques were speaking in unison and Steve didn't think he'd ever seen anything creepier in his life. "But you're supposed to be a smart boy," they said. "Care to venture a guess?"

Steve had to swallow a couple of times before he could speak. "Schmidt," he said. He had no idea how Schmidt was doing this, but it couldn't be anyone else.

Monty and Jacques laughed. "Oh, very good! Very good. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way. You were still a civilian when we met in Azzano. Not that we had time for pleasantries then." The two of them swung their heads in Bucky's direction. "Nice to see you back on your feet, Sergeant. It seems you were able to survive Arnim's ministrations, which, I must say, is an impressive feat in its own right. There are so few who do. Especially since he _was_ trying to kill you there towards the end. Evidently, he found you supremely irritating."

Bucky looked like he might throw up, but he glared back angrily. "What the hell do you want?"

"As I said," a new voice answered, and Bucky yelped and jumped away from Dugan. "Just stopping in for a chat. I've been meaning to get in touch with you for some time, and the opportunity has finally presented itself."

"Oh, crap, oh, crap, oh, crap," Jim muttered, backing away from the trio of his white-eyed friends.

"Dude, what the hell is this?" Gabe whispered.

Jim shook his head. "I don't know," he breathed.

"Do I have your attention yet, Captain?" Dugan, Monty and Jacques asked.

"Yes!" Steve snapped. "I'm listening, okay? Just…" He waved at his friends and whatever the hell Schmidt was doing. "Stop it!"

The three of them chuckled. "It is quite difficult to have a conversation with someone who's not physically present," they said. "That's why I started this in the first place. And if I stopped, we wouldn't be able to talk, you and I."

"Fine!" Steve snapped. "You wanna talk?" He had to stop and swallow again before he could get the next sentence out. He was terrified to make the offer he was about to make, but it was him Schmidt wanted. He couldn't do anything else. "Take me, then."

"Steve—" Bucky started, eyes wide in alarm.

"Take me!" Steve said a little louder, cutting Bucky off. "You want to talk to me, then let's do it. You let them go and jump in here." He gestured at his head. "And we can talk all you want."

Dugan, Monty and Jacques laughed gleefully. "Oh, you really do take that label of 'hero' so seriously, don't you?" they replied. "To think that someone that noble actually exists, it's like…It's like something out of a cartoon."

"Are we gonna do it?" Steve growled.

"No," they responded. "It would be more efficient, I admit. But the fact of the matter is, I can't. Erskine really did take much more care with your version of the serum than he did with mine." It was hard to tell with three voices speaking at once, but Steve thought he detected a touch of bitterness there.

"I can't get into your head, Captain," they continued. "And, really, even if I could…"

"It's ever so much more fun this way," Jim said, turning his white eyes up to Steve, and Steve instinctively backed up several steps before he could catch himself.

"Okay," Steve snarled. "You've made your point." If he could just get him to stop…taking over his friends and just _talk_ to him, maybe they could still figure out a way to get out of this.

"Oh, I don't know that I have," the four of them said as one. "You are a smart boy, but from what I hear, you're terribly stubborn. I've unnerved you, certainly, but I don't know that my point has quite sunk all the way in to that thick head of yours."

"Cap?" Gabe whispered nervously, and Steve knew what he was afraid of, but he didn't know how to stop it. He stepped forward, putting himself between Gabe and Bucky and the rest of them, though he didn't think it would help.

"No, it really has," Steve insisted. "You're trying to show me that you can get to me, and you have, okay? You've freaked me the hell out," he admitted, and it hurt to do it, but if it would keep Schmidt from spreading any further…

Steve flinched and swallowed down a rising swell of panic when he heard Gabe chuckle behind him. "I'm glad to hear it," Gabe said, and Steve spun slowly on his heel to face his milky-eyed friend. "But I wasn't finished yet."

"So, talk," Steve said softly. He faced the five members of his team that Schmidt was talking through, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Bucky, lips pressed tightly together and tremors running up from his clenched fists. They both knew he was next, and Steve had no idea how to keep it from happening. "You said you wanted to talk to me. I'm listening. What do you want to talk about?"

"You," the five of them said. "The famous 'Captain America'."

"What about me?" Steve asked.

"What you are," they replied. "What you could be. And what you're going to do."

"Nice of you to be so worried about my future," Steve said, wondering as soon as the words were out of his mouth if sarcasm would just make things worse.

They all chuckled. "Oh, it isn't your future I'm worried about, Captain," they told him. "I'd hardly come all this way for that."

"So…" Steve prompted.

"So," they continued. "What you are is out of your depth. A little boy, fighting a war that's far too big for him, because he thinks he knows what it means to do the right thing."

"And what is the right thing supposed to be?" Steve countered. "What you're doing?"

"Pssh!" they all scoffed. "The right thing. There's no such thing, Captain. Right and wrong, they're just something to keep the lesser beings in line. What really matters is power. Strength and weakness, that's all there is. Those strong enough to take power, and the weak to be ruled under them. And you…" they all pointed at him. "You're strong enough to take that power. After what Erskine gave you, the world could be yours if you would let go of those pitiful morals holding you back."

"Is that what you did?"

"It is. And I have more power than a child like yourself could even begin to dream."

"And you're offering to share it with me?" Steve asked incredulously.

The five of them laughed at him, and that was the first laugh that sounded actually amused. "Oh, no, Captain," they said. "Not in the slightest. Power like this will never be yours, because you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. You're weak and pathetic because you are bound by the rules of ordinary men, and I have no intention of sharing what I've achieved with you or with anyone."

"Then why—" Steve started.

"I just wanted to show you what you're up against," came a voice from behind him.

"Oh, Bucky," Steve breathed. He swallowed down a wave of despairing nausea and took a second to school his face into something more controlled before turning around to face him.

"Thought I forgot about him, didn't you?" Schmidt-in-Bucky said with a wicked grin and dead white eyes. "I was just saving him for last. I know he's your favorite."

"What do you want?!" Steve demanded, and he couldn't keep all of that desperate helplessness out of his voice. Schmidt had everyone—_everyone —_and Steve didn't know what to do.

"I want this," Bucky said, raising his hands to gesture at Steve. "Right here. Steven Rogers, the boy playing the big hero, reminded of how insignificant he really is."

"I want you to see that no matter how good you think you are," Gabe hissed. "You're never going to be good enough to beat me."

"I want you to know, to really understand, who you've chosen as your enemy," Jim said.

"I want you to see what true power can do," Dugan said.

"And just how helpless you are to stop it," Monty finished.

"I want you to be afraid," Jacques told him. "To know fear for what may be the first time in your life."

"Because now there's something to be afraid of," they said as one, and a cold shiver ran down Steve's spine.

"I can reach out and shake the foundations of your reality from half a world away," they all went on together. "And it's barely a fraction of my power. This is what I want, Captain Steven Rogers. For you to know your place."

They all stepped forward, tightening their half-circle around him, and Steve couldn't stop himself from stepping back.

"And now we come to the part where we talk about what you're going to do," the six of them said. "Insignificant though you are, you have been making a nuisance of yourself, and from here on out, you are going to stay. Out. Of my way." Each of them threw their arms out, gesturing at one another. "Remember this, next time you want to destroy one of my factories. Remember this, next time you think about interfering in my plans. Remember what I can do."

They all smirked, and horror roared up out of Steve's heart and wrapped its hands around his throat as Bucky pulled his gun out of his belt and pressed the barrel up underneath his own chin. "And remember what I _could_ do," he said softly, and something in that voice alone was more terrifying than all of them speaking together.

Steve couldn't do anything but try to remember how to breathe, his petrified eyes locked on Bucky's hand and the finger curled around the trigger. Bucky grinned evilly. "_Now_, I think you've gotten my point."

He tossed the gun carelessly at Steve's feet, and as one, each of his friends' eyes rolled back into their heads and they dropped to the floor like puppets with their strings cut.

With the sudden end of the humming of the naquadah in the walls and the abrupt lack of that frightening chorus of voices, the room felt so quiet that Steve could hear his heart pounding like a kettledrum. He half-dropped, half-fell to his knees next to Bucky, whose head was lolled back at an awkward angle and his mouth hanging partly open. Blood was trickling from his ear.

"Please, don't be dead; please, don't be dead; please, don't be dead," Steve whispered, ripping off his gloves as his fingers scrabbled frantically on Bucky's neck for a pulse. He let out a stuttering breath of relief when he found it, squeezing his eyes shut and ignoring the moisture that leaked out. He carefully lifted one of Bucky's eyelids, relieved to see that familiar steel blue staring back at him.

He checked each of his team mates, crawling from body to body with shaking arms. They were all breathing. They all had a pulse. Their eyes were all back to the colors they should be. They were all bleeding.

None of them would wake up.

Steve sat back on his haunches, leaning his head against the wall, and he hadn't had an asthma attack in almost two years, but his chest was getting tight and it felt like his airways were closing up and it was getting hard to breathe. He spent a couple of minutes just inhaling and exhaling. He was no good to anybody if he passed out.

He had no idea what to do. He had no idea what Schmidt had done. Was this more than just a warning? Had Schmidt actually…He hadn't killed them, but he did _something_, and Steve didn't know what it was or if it could be undone. He needed help.

Help. He needed help. He couldn't get it here. He couldn't leave them here to go get it. Schmidt had gotten them in here. Maybe he could get them anywhere else too, but he'd definitely gotten them in here, so Steve had to get them the hell OUT. Not apparation—he couldn't do side-along for that many at once, he'd have to leave some of them behind. He couldn't carry them outside to where it was safer—same problem. Portkey. He could do a Portkey.

After Zurich, he'd gotten Ethan to show him how to do it. He knew how, but Ethan had said you had to be careful making them. Steve was worried and distracted and about to throw up. He had to be careful. He had to do this right.

There was nothing big enough in here to move them all at the same time. Very quickly, Steve rushed across the hall to the living quarters and grabbed a dusty blanket off one of the beds before hurrying back. He tore it into strips, not tearing quite all the way through at alternating ends so that it unwound into one long strip of material. Checking once more to make sure his friends were all still alive and breathing, he then turned his back on them and tried to clear his mind, focusing on the spell and the blanket in front of him.

The fear that was growing in his mind refused to go away, so Steve shoved it back into the corner instead. It could come back in a minute. He could deal with it in a minute, he just had to get this right. He could do this.

Once the spell was done, Steve uncoiled the torn blanket, laying a strip of it over each of his friends. He sat down and clenched a length of it in his fist, waiting for the spell to start and praying he'd done it right. They were going home. It would be okay. Rains and Phillips, they could figure this out. Steve just had to get them home. It would be okay.

The spell activated and Steve felt the now-familiar twisting of the world around him and rough thump onto a stone floor. There was a gasp of surprise followed by the sound of shattering porcelain and Steve looked up. Nurse Rains. He did it. They made it home.

"Help," he said, getting shakily to his feet. "They…I don't…I need…" The fear he had shoved away was back with a vengeance now and it was crushing the air out of his chest again. His blue eyes locked onto her green ones pleadingly.

"Help," he whispered.

* * *

_Well, that certainly didn't go well. Tune in Monday to see what happens next! In the meantime, I'd love it if you'd drop me a note and let me know what you think._


	68. It's Only A Passing Thing, This Shadow

_Alright, that last one was a rough one. Schmidt hit the team hard, and it's going to take some time to put the pieces back together.  
_

* * *

Gwyneth Rains was startled up from her reading by a sharp pop in the air and the sound of several bodies dropping onto the floor of her infirmary, making her gasp and drop her tea cup. Steve Rogers and his Howling Commando boys were on the floor at her feet, and Steve was the only one getting to his.

"Help," he said, pushing himself up from the floor. "They…I don't…I need..." He looked helplessly at his friends, his voice shaking nearly as much as his hands. His eyes met hers again, frightened and pained. "Help," he whispered.

She was already on her feet, moving forward. "Willow!" she called, then turned her thoughts to the patients on the floor, knowing the elf would appear and begin doing the same. Unconscious, all of them, but breathing. All bleeding from the ears, and the nose too, some of them, but that was the only external sign of injury. Pulses a bit erratic, but in no danger of failing. She waved her wand over the six of them, running a diagnostic. Dark magic, and strong too, but it was beginning to fade—they weren't well, but they were in no immediate danger.

"Willow, get them up into some beds and then go and fetch Professor Phillips." The elf had her own magic and could get the boys into the beds quickly and easily, so Gwyneth turned her attention for the moment to the one who was still standing.

"Here, now, love, come and sit before you fall down," she said, taking Steve firmly by the arm. The poor thing didn't appear to be hurt either, but he was shaking like a leaf and clearly in shock. To avoid a fight later, she steered him to the bed next to the one Willow had put Bucky in, and he moved along with her compliantly. She sat him down on the mattress and waved her wand quickly over him, confirming that he was physically unharmed.

"What happened, love?" she asked, putting a hand to his cheek to turn him to look at her when he didn't answer. "Steve? Can you hear me?" He nodded numbly. "Can you tell me what happened?" She'd seen the poor boy bruised and bloodied and halfway to death's doorstep more times than she cared to count, but this was the first time she'd seen him like this.

"I don't know," he stammered. "I don't know how he did it. You have—you have to help them. I couldn't get them to wake up."

"I will help them," she said, patting his cheek reassuringly. "But it would help if I knew what I was up against. Who did this to them? What did he do?"

"Schmidt," he breathed.

Gwyneth blinked in surprise. Had she heard him right? "Schmidt?" she asked carefully. The boy couldn't have gone up against the head of Hydra and come out without a scratch on him. Perhaps she had missed something in her diagnosis and there was more wrong with him than she thought. "Johann Schmidt?" she confirmed.

"Uh huh," Steve nodded softly. "He was…" His eyebrows furrowed together, and he wasn't looking at her anymore, but through her. "He wasn't _there_, but he was…He was there. The magic, I could, I could feel it moving, and then Jacques was…" He swallowed hard and then he was looking at her again. "His eyes were white," he whispered. "Like a dead guy. And he started talking, but it wasn't Jacques who was talking, it was _him_."

Gwyneth felt her mouth dropping open in horror. It sounded like he was describing…She'd only ever read about it before, it was so rare, such _dark_ magic…Had Johann Schmidt _possessed_ those poor boys?

"He kept talking, and then Monty," Steve continued. "He kept…he kept…One at a time, their eyes would go all white, and they would all talk at the same time, all the same thing, and he wanted to talk to me, and I couldn't get him to stop!" This last was said with a pleading tone, as though he needed her to know that he'd tried.

"He got them all," Steve said, swallowing hard. "And he couldn't get me, he said he couldn't get in my head, so he was gonna get in theirs so we could talk. He kept taking them," he said again. "All of them, he took all of them! And then he was gone and they all fell over and I can't wake them up!"

"Ssh," she said softly, putting her arms around his shoulders and stroking the back of his head as she hugged him. "Hush now, love, it's alright," she told him. He shook in her arms, and her heart broke for him, for all these children she was trying so hard to protect. "We'll set them right, don't you worry. Hush now." She wasn't sure just yet how she would do it, or what she even needed to do, but with God as her witness, she was going to keep that promise. Johann Schmidt had taken enough.

"Help them," Steve begged, sitting up and looking at her. He was still shaking, but his eyes were dry. "I'm fine, I'm—really, I'm okay." She couldn't help a small smile at that, because _there_ was the boy she was so familiar with. "They need you, not me."

"I will help them," she told him. "I promise." A glance over his shoulder showed her that Willow had returned, Chester striding along beside her and Peggy Carter in tow. "You're not fine, though," she told him. Even when he'd been a little shrimp of a thing, he could have been standing in front of her holding his guts in his hands and insisting he was alright. "But that's okay," she said, patting the side of his head. "You will be. And so will they."

She looked up, catching Peggy's eye. "Miss Carter." She waved her over. He needed rest, and the safety and presence of another person, and she couldn't give him that right now, not if she was going to see to the others as well. But Peggy could.

"He's not hurt," she told her, catching the worried look in the girl's eye. Peggy sat down beside him and Gwyneth stood up, transferring him into her arms. "But he needs a bit of steadying. Have him talk to you if he will, but if not, just hold onto him and let him have a bit of peace."

Peggy nodded, determination taking over the fear in her eyes. Gwyneth smiled. The girl was a strong one, and she would help him find his feet again.

She felt determination settle into her own soul, and she squared her shoulders back and turned to her other patients. She would fix whatever that sadistic freak of nature had done to her students, and she would make sure they lived to see the day that that red face of his turned to black as it burned in hell.

* * *

Even when Steve had been sick, Peggy didn't think she'd ever seen him this shaky. He just wouldn't stop shivering, and she finally pulled her arms away from him long enough to pull the blanket off the bed they were sitting on and wrap it around him. That seemed to help a little. Nurse Rains had explained to her that he was in shock, but that was as far as she'd gotten before turning her attention to the rest of the team. Peggy was scared, because anything that could scare Steve this badly had to be something dreadful, but she was mindful of Rains' instructions and forced that fear down and tried to be calm. She tried to talk to Steve, to get him to tell her what had happened, but, though he seemed to be aware enough of his surroundings to understand her, none of his answers were very coherent.

"He kept taking them," was about all she could get out of him, so she just held on to him and made soothing noises and stroked his hair, and he was still shaking, but was growing slowly calmer.

With one ear, she listened as Rains explained things to Phillips and Willow, and by the time they had moved on to discussing a course of treatment, Peggy felt like she was going to throw up. No wonder Steve was in such a state!

Steve wasn't talking anymore, but he wasn't shaking either, just leaning into her shoulder and staring off into the middle distance. "It's alright, Steve," she told him. "They're safe here." She knew it wasn't himself he was worried about. It was never himself he was worried about—although, every now and then, it wouldn't hurt if he was—and she knew what he needed to hear. "Hogwarts is the safest place in Europe. He can't get them here." She prayed that was true—her estimation of Schmidt's powers had widely increased in scope just now, but Hogwarts was one of the most magically fortified places in the world, and if Schmidt could have gotten in here, he would have done it already. "They're safe," she said again.

"They are," Nurse Rains confirmed, reappearing by Steve's bed. "He can't get them here, and we know how to set them right."

Steve looked up at that, a tiny flicker of emotion on his face as hope flashed in his eyes. "You do?" he asked quietly, and Peggy's heart broke at that small little voice that sounded seven years old.

"We do," she repeated. "It'll just take a bit of time." She extended a hand with a tin cup in it. "Can you drink this for me, love?"

"What is it?" Steve asked, though he didn't sound particularly interested in the answer.

"It'll make you feel better," she told him, picking up one of his hands and placing the cup in it. His fingers automatically curled around it, and he lifted it to his lips and drank. His hands were only shaking a little bit now. "There we are," she said with a smile, taking the cup back and patting his shoulder.

Peggy started to ask a question, but Rains cut her off with a glance and mouthed that she should wait. Peggy nodded, returning her attention to Steve. "Steve?" she asked softly.

He didn't say anything, but he turned his head a bit so that his eyes met hers. He was leaning into her more heavily now, and whatever Rains had given him to help calm him down was slowly putting him to sleep.

"What do you need?" she asked. "Can I do anything?"

He didn't say anything for a moment. "I need…" he started softly. He blinked sadly up at her. "Can you stay with me?" His body wasn't shaking anymore, but there was a little tremor in his voice.

She kissed his forehead warmly. "I'll stay right here," she promised. Something settled a bit in his tired eyes. "Do you want to lie down?" He nodded, and she helped him move so that he was horizontal on the mattress. "There," she said, brushing his hair back and smoothing down the pillow. "You can go ahead and sleep now," she told him. "You're here with the rest of the team, so you'll know as soon as something goes on. Bucky's over there," she said, pointing to the next bed over. "You can keep an eye on him. And I…" She paused, shifting a bit to find the right angle to lean back against the wall before tugging his head over gently to rest against her side. "I am right here, and I'm going to stay right here." He looked up at her gratefully, and she rested a hand on the side of his head.

He nodded minutely, looking as though he wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words. He let his eyes close, rolling more closely into her, and two of his fingers stretched up and snaked through one of the belt loops on the side of her skirt. She smiled and blinked back the moisture springing to her eyes and heard him whisper sleepily, "Thank you for being here."

Nurse Rains came over a few minutes later, pulling up a chair quietly. "Is he asleep?" he asked.

Peggy nodded. Was something wrong? Was that why Rains had wanted her to wait before asking questions?

As if sensing what was going through Peggy's mind, Rains smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, it's not as bad as all that. But I imagine you want some details, and it's a nasty business. He's lived it once today; he didn't need to hear it again."

Peggy nodded, grateful for her thoughtfulness. "I heard what you said about Schmidt," she said, speaking softly so she wouldn't disturb Steve. "Is it true? Did he really…possess them?" She felt nauseous just saying the word.

Rains tilted her head thoughtfully. "Yes. At least," she amended. "In a way."

"In a way?" Peggy repeated.

Rains sighed. "Possession is…well, it's a dark business. Beyond me, to be honest," she admitted. "I can treat what symptoms I see, but powerful dark magic like that…" She nodded her head over to where Phillips was conferring with Willow. "That's more his line."

"And he can fix it?" Peggy asked. When Rains nodded, she pressed on. "What did you mean, he only possessed them in a way?"

"Well, a true possession is when one wizard—a very, _very_ dark one—fully inhabits the body of another person. That dark wizard controls the other person's body as completely as if it were his own. In order to truly possess someone, there's a great deal of initial set up, lots of spells, a lot of preparation. That's all on the part of the one doing the possessing, of course, and assuming the person being possessed is unwilling. Once it's done, however, control is nearly absolute and indefinite. This one was…different. He was using them to speak through, and while he did have control over physical motion as well, he wouldn't have been able to maintain it for very long—not without the physical contact required to set the spell up properly. He was also spreading himself a bit thin, being in six people at once. Steve was saying as how they all spoke and moved in unison, and they would have to, with only one person at the helm. He could speak and move through one of them alone, or all of them together—he couldn't have two do one thing and two another." She stopped and sighed. "Different though it was, it was still a real possession. The control he had was complete; it's only the amount of time he had that control that was limited."

"Are you sure they're safe here?" Peggy wondered. She'd told Steve they were, but it was really just hopeful thinking on her part.

"They are," Rains told her. "All the spells and wards we have in place make Hogwarts one of the safest places in the world." She smiled reassuringly. "They_ are_ safe here."

"What about outside the gates?" Even if they never went on a mission again, they'd have to leave the school sometime.

"Professor Phillips believes this can't happen again, but he needs to investigate a bit more to be sure."

Peggy nodded. She hated the lingering uncertainty, but she trusted Phillips to know what he was talking about. "Why would Schmidt do this?" It still didn't make any sense. Schmidt was evil, sure, but there had to be _some_ method to his madness.

Rains sighed sadly and nodded down at Steve. "He said he wanted to talk to him."

"He wanted to talk to Steve? About what?"

She shook her head. "He didn't say. Though I would imagine it was something rather threatening, all things considered."

"How did he…" Peggy shook her head. She knew Schmidt was powerful, but this was… "_How_ did he do this?"

"That's what I'm going to figure out," Phillips said, walking over to them. "I think I have an idea, but I need to see the cave, and the mine needs securing anyway." He looked down at her. "Do you want to come?"

She really did, but she shook her head. She had promised Steve she would stay. "I think I should stay here, Sir," she said, and he nodded. "Are they going to be okay?" she asked, nodding at the rest of the team.

"They will," he said. "The effects of a spell like that are nasty, but not permanent. I've cleared up the trickier ones, and Willow is taking care of the rest of it." He nodded over to where the elf was on a stool next to Jacques' bed, muttering something to herself. The tiny hand she had placed on his forehead looked like it was glowing. Peggy found herself suddenly curious about house elf magic and what Willow was doing, but now wasn't the time to ask.

"I'll be back before too long," Phillips finished, then nodded at the two of them and left.

"It's really that easy?" Peggy asked skeptically. "Just some spells and…whatever Willow's doing?"

Rains sighed. "Physically, yes. Beyond that…" She sighed again. "We'll have to wait and see when they wake up," she finished quietly. "To say they've been through a traumatic experience…"

Peggy nodded again. That was putting it mildly.

"But whatever comes, we'll see it right," Rains went on, and she sounded more sure of herself. She turned to Peggy and smiled. "Thank you for seeing to him," she said, nodding down at Steve again.

"I'm happy to," Peggy said sincerely.

Rains nodded, smiling softly. "I know." She stood and put a hand to Peggy's shoulder. "And he'll need you more before this is over. The rest of them too, I expect. And if no one's ever told you before, love, I'm proud of you—the way you keep this lot looked after on top of everything else you do. It's not a job just anyone could do. And you do it very well." She squeezed Peggy's shoulder and moved away to help Willow, and Peggy swallowed down a lump of emotion in her throat.

Phillips wasn't gone more than an hour. Willow had finished her ministrations, and Rains had run her checks again and cast a couple of quick little spells to make sure they were rid of any lingering dark magic. They were all just sleeping now, and though Steve twitched occasionally or whimpered into Peggy's side, he didn't wake up either.

When Phillips came back, he checked in quickly with Rains, then the two of them came over to where Peggy was sitting so he could explain what he'd found. Steve and the team _had_ cleared the mine before whatever had happened with Schmidt had taken place. The miners and surviving Hydra soldiers were still there, and Phillips had left some Aurors behind to see to the necessary disenchanting and/or incarceration. The room where the boys had encountered Schmidt had been in the lower levels, an office designed mainly for communication with the surface. It had also been intended for secure long-distance communication—its inconvenient location made it useful for private conversations, and the presence of the naquadah in the walls boosted the power of any communication device used there, particularly if it was magical. Phillips knew all of that because the S.S.R. had been the ones to install that communication equipment in the first place, specifically for those purposes. When Hydra had taken the mine, they'd changed the channels and continued to use the equipment.

"That was how he did it," Phillips said sourly. "A dark wizard can possess someone over a long distance, but they have to have initial contact with them first. In theory, something like that contact could be made temporarily by projection through something like a radio or a telegraph, but it would require more power than humanly possible. The naquadah amplified his own power and let him do it, but he wouldn't be able to do it anywhere else without that sort of power boost."

"So, as long as they stay out of that mine…" Peggy began.

"Schmidt won't be able to do this again," Phillips confirmed.

Peggy nodded, satisfied, but she was still confused. "How did he know they were there, Sir?" she asked. "I could follow that once he knew they were there, he could do whatever he did with the radio, but…How did he even know in the first place?" It seemed a bit unlikely that he was just hoping they'd show up there one day.

"Alarm spell on the radio," Phillips told her. "Fairly standard in a high security place like that. We had one down there too. It detects people who shouldn't be there and starts broadcasting back to a paired radio. Evidently, Schmidt had the other half, and he heard them talking in there, took his chance." He sighed deeply. "Schmidt's powerful, but it still would have taken a hell of a lot of work to do what he did. Do we know what he said to Rogers?"

"He didn't say," Rains said. She cast a questioning look at Peggy.

"He didn't tell me either."

Rains nodded. "We can ask him again when he comes 'round, but you'll not press the boy," she told him. Phillips nodded. He got up to run another series of checks over the team, now that he knew more specifically what had happened, and he seemed satisfied with the results. Rains got up and went with him.

Peggy stayed with Steve, stroking his hair and trying to sort through what she was feeling. She was frightened and angry and confused. Whatever Schmidt had wanted to tell Steve, there were easier ways he could have done it than that. The fact that he could do this—and that no one had known he could—made him all the more terrifying than he already was. And he was clever, because he'd studied Steve, and knew that if he really wanted to scare him, it was his team he should go after, not Steve himself. He seemed to know so much more about them than they knew about him.

She didn't know how long Steve had been awake when she looked down and saw his eyes were open. "Steve?" she asked gently.

"Hey," he said softly.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said after a moment. He rolled his head to look up and meet her eyes, and he looked steadier than he had before. "You stayed," he said softly.

She smiled and stroked her thumb gently across his cheek. "I did promise I would."

"Thanks," he said quietly. "It…It helped."

"I'm glad," she told him.

She moved so he could sit up, though she stayed on the bed. "How are they?" he asked.

"They haven't woken up yet," she said. "But Phillips said he got all the traces of dark magic out, and Rains says Schmidt didn't hurt them. She says they'll be okay."

Steve stared for a long minute down the line of beds. "He wanted me," he said coldly. "That's why he did this. He wanted to talk to me."

"What did he say?" Peggy asked carefully.

Steve huffed a humorless laugh. "That I'm pissing him off. He wants me to stop getting in his way." He was quiet for a minute. "I know that should be good, that we can mess up his plans enough to make him mad, because I feel like…I feel like that should mean we're winning." He swallowed hard. "This doesn't feel like we're winning," he said softly. He turned back to look at her, and she could see he was trying not to cry. "If this is what he does just as a warning, Peggy, I…"

"I know," she agreed. If this was the warning, what happened when he really lashed out?

They sat there for a while. Peggy wasn't sure what else to say, and Steve didn't seem to want to say any more. They just held on to each other, lost in their own thoughts. Trying to feel safe.

They were still holding each other when the rest of the team started waking up.

* * *

Steve was glad, once it was all over, he was glad that his team had woken up the way they did. He'd been afraid—though Rains and Peggy and Phillips had been sure they were safe here—he'd been afraid that they would all wake up together, moving and talking like they did in the cave. They all woke up differently, and it was kind of awful, but they were free, so at least Steve could be grateful for that.

Gabe had woken up first, and he'd woken up screaming. Nurse Rains had sat with him and held on to him and it had taken him a long time to stop.

Dugan woke up swinging, and the way Rains had taken the hit and kept right on going without flinching until she had him calmed down made Steve wonder how many times that kind of thing happened up here.

Jacques woke up crying, though he quieted quickly. It wasn't long before he was asleep again, though Steve could see him trembling under his blanket.

Monty had shaken himself awake and was currently barely visible underneath a pile of blankets.

Jim had flailed up off the mattress, hit the floor with a thump that Steve had heard from five beds away, and scuttled back against the wall, breath coming in painful, erratic gasps. It had taken some coaxing from Nurse Rains to remind him where he was and get him back up on the bed.

No one knew quite when Bucky woke up—they just looked over and saw that his eyes were open and he was staring silently at the ceiling, his hands clamped together tightly on top of his chest.

Steve had no idea what he should do. When things went bad on missions, he was usually able to find something to encourage everyone. He had nothing this time. It was all his fault—Schmidt had wanted him, and they'd had to pay the price for it. There was nothing he could say after that.

He talked softly with Peggy for a while, telling her more about what Schmidt had said and done, and listening as she told him what Rains had said and Phillips had found out. It was comforting, he supposed, that as long as they stayed out of that mine, Schmidt couldn't get them again. The damage had already been done, though.

Rains released them all the next morning. Steve had checked in with everyone before they all left, and though they all assured him they were fine, they were all subdued and flat and very unlike their usual selves. Steve wondered how much of that was dealing with what had happened and how much was anger at him for making it happen.

He really didn't know what to do about Bucky. He'd barely talked since leaving the infirmary. He drifted around looking haunted, and it was a look Steve recognized, though it wasn't as bad as it had been after Italy. He should have known what to do—he and Bucky had certainly had their share of traumas by this point, and they always pulled each other through them. But Steve had caused this one. How could he…How could he help Bucky feel better if being around Steve just reminded him why all this crap had happened to him to start with?

It was a relief when classes started again on Monday. At least there was something else he could focus his brain on. He kept mostly to himself all day, avoiding his teammates out of shame and avoiding Peggy because he didn't know what to say to her. He went to bed early and repeated the whole thing again on Tuesday.

Becky came and found him on Wednesday. "Hey, Steve," she said, not waiting for an invitation to hop up and join him on the planter he was sitting on in one of the courtyards. "Here."

He had to smile a little bit when he looked down to see what she was holding out to him. "Why is it you always seem to have cookies?" he asked her.

"I'm better at saving them than you and Jay are," she explained. She waggled the cookie in his face until he took it.

"Thanks."

She nodded. She looked like she was trying to figure out how to say something, so Steve waited until she found the words. "Why aren't you talking to Jay?" she asked at last.

Steve sighed. "Because…" He sighed again. "Because I messed up."

"What'd you do?" she asked curiously.

Steve sighed again. "Did he tell you what happened this weekend?" He knew she knew they'd been up in the infirmary again, and she'd come up to visit. He didn't know how much Bucky had told her.

"Yeah," she said. "Mostly." She frowned. "It sounded really bad."

"It was," Steve agreed.

"He didn't tell me anything _you_ did that was bad, though," she continued.

"It happened because of me," Steve said. "Schmidt, the guy who…did that to them, he did it because he wanted to talk to me."

Becky was quiet for a minute. When she looked back up at him, Steve was surprised that she didn't look mad. "You think it's your fault, huh?"

"It _is_ my fault."

"No, it's not."

Steve sighed. She was only thirteen. The world was a lot easier when you were thirteen. "Look, Becky, I—"

"Don't 'look, Becky' me," she huffed. "You're thinking I'm too little to understand what's going on, but I'm not stupid."

"I don't think you're stupid."

"Good," she replied. " 'cause I'm not." She paused, then looked over at him wryly. "You kind of are, though."

"Excuse me?" he asked, arching an eyebrow.

She shrugged. "Why would something that you didn't even know was gonna happen be your fault? It's not like you knew this Schmidt guy wanted to talk to you. And it's not like you offered for him to get in your friends so he could do it. Jay even said you tried to get him to go in your head instead." She smiled up at him sadly. "You did the best you could."

Steve felt a lump forming in his throat. "It wasn't good enough," he said softly.

Becky leaned over and hugged him. "But that's not your fault," she told him gently.

That urge to cry that he'd been getting every time he looked at one of his team mates was back, and he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed it down.

"You should talk to Jay," she said. "He thinks you're scared of him."

"What?" That brought Steve up short.

"I'm not supposed to tell you that," Becky said. "But that's why he thinks you're not talking to him."

"I'm not scared of him," Steve protested.

"Well, maybe you should tell him that," Becky replied.

Steve pondered over that for the rest of the day. It had been creepy as hell, Schmidt using Bucky's voice to say what he did, and the thought of him putting Bucky's gun to his head and curling his finger around the trigger still made Steve want to throw up, but that had been Schmidt doing all that. Not Bucky. It wasn't like he was looking at Bucky and still seeing Schmidt. Did Bucky really think that?

He went to bed still thinking about it. Just like every night since coming back from the mine, it took him a while to fall asleep. Once he did, just like every night since coming back, that was all he dreamed about. It wasn't enough to just hear Schmidt's words over and over and see what he _had_ done. His subconscious had to run away with Schmidt's threat, more than happy to show him all the things that _could_ have happened. He woke up gasping in a cold sweat—Schmidt-in-Bucky had been in the process of cutting Bucky's throat, making sure Steve was well within range of the arterial spray, and he flinched back when that face continued to hover in front of him.

"Sorry, Steve," Bucky said, and it wasn't Schmidt, it was just Bucky, standing over him looking worried, and then really hurt when Steve flinched away. "I thought…Never mind. I'm sorry."

"No, Bucky, hang on," Steve said, sitting up as Bucky turned away. Bucky really _did_ think Steve was scared of him. He hadn't meant to flinch away like that, it was…His subconscious was messed up right now. That was all it was. He sighed and swung his feet off the bed, searching on the ground for his slippers. "Can we…Can we talk for a minute?"

"Sure," Bucky said. He looked a little wary, but he followed Steve into the common room. They each took a chair in front of the dying fire. "You said you wanted to talk?" Bucky finally prompted when Steve didn't say anything.

Steve sighed. "Yeah." He sighed again. "I don't really know what to say, but I'm not afraid of you." Bucky looked up at him at that, and Steve went on. "I was just dreaming about, well, you know, and I just wasn't…all the way awake when I saw you just now," he said, nodding back towards their room. "That's all. I'm sorry."

Bucky looked at him for a long minute, then nodded, apparently deciding he believed him. "So, what's going on, then?" he asked quietly.

Steve shook his head. He couldn't avoid Bucky forever. "I know what happened was all my fault," he said, staring down at his feet and the faint orange glow where they were outlined against the embers. "And I guess I…" He swallowed down a lump of shame. "I haven't worked up the guts to face any of you guys yet." It just hurt too much, what had happened, and he knew he was being a coward, but dealing with it was going to hurt more, and he wasn't ready for that.

After a beat of silence, Bucky said, "You think I'm _mad_ at you?", and the incredulity in his voice had Steve looking up in spite of himself.

"Aren't you?"

"Why would I be? You call Schmidt and tell him we were coming?"

"No."

"So?" Bucky prompted.

"Bucky, he only did that because he wanted to talk to me," Steve sighed.

"What did he say?" Bucky asked curiously. "I only…I only remember the first part. Before he…" He swallowed and gestured at the side of his head.

"He wanted me to stop," Steve said quietly. "It was a warning, what he did to you guys. He wanted to show me what he could do and to tell me to stop getting in his way. Everything we're doing, with the factories and stuff, I guess we're pissing him off. And he wants us to stop." He sighed. "It's all my fault."

Bucky was quiet for a minute, absorbing that. "Well," he said at last. "Your lack of control over his chosen method of communication aside, are you aware of how full of yourself what you just said makes you sound?"

"What?" Steve asked, feeling his eyebrows draw together in bewilderment.

It was only a little smile on Bucky's face, but it was the first one Steve had seen since the mine. "Steve, you're the leader of the Howling Commandos. You're not the whole team. Not to belittle your value to the rest of us or anything, but we could do what we're doing without you. Granted, not nearly as well, but we could still raise some hell for Hydra. He doesn't want _you_ to stop, he wants _us_ to stop. He's just as pissed at the rest of us as he is at you—he just wanted to talk to you because you're in charge. And he did his homework. He knew getting at us was the best way to get at you, but that warning was for all of us. It's not your fault, Stevie."

It felt good to hear that, but, well, Bucky was always too quick to forgive him. "I just…" he sighed. "I should've _done_ something. He was…taking over all of you, and I just stood there freaking out."

"You did do something. You kept your head and figured out what he wanted, and you got us all back to where we could get help afterwards. You even—I do remember this part, and I _am_ kind of mad at you for this—but you even offered to let him set up camp inside your head instead."

"Didn't work, though," Steve protested.

"So?" Bucky countered. "You tried something and it didn't work. You don't get mad at me when I miss a shot, do you?" Steve shook his head. Bucky reached over and squeezed his arm. "You did your best, Stevie. That's all you can do, and that's all we expect from you. I'm not mad at you for what Schmidt did, and neither is anybody else on the team. We're shook up and messed up, but we're not blaming you."

"I just—"

"Don't," Bucky stopped him. "Hydra gets in your head. They're good at that. But you can kick 'em back out again." He squeezed his arm again. "We need you, Captain," he said warmly. "Don't let him keep you on the bench."

Steve managed a watery smile. "I thought you just said you could do it without me?"

"Yeah, and I also said not well," Bucky replied.

Steve smiled and nodded, feeling his cheeks going red. "Okay," he said softly. "I'm sorry."

"Forget it," Bucky said, smiling back.

"I'm still pretty freaked out about it, though," Steve admitted.

Bucky nodded. "We all are. At least now we can freak out about it as a team."

There was something to that, Steve had to admit.

"Hey," Steve said, reaching over and tapping Bucky's arm. Bucky looked back at him. "Are you okay?" Steve asked. "I should've asked before, I just…" Well, he'd thought Bucky hadn't wanted him to.

Bucky drew in a deep breath. "As okay as I can be, I guess. I'm not sleeping so good," he admitted.

"What was it like?"

Bucky didn't say anything for a few minutes. "It was like I was drowning," he said at last. "You know that, you know that feeling when you're under water, and you're swimming up and you realize the surface is a lot farther away than you thought?"

Steve nodded.

"It was like that, except…except it wasn't really water. It was like cement. Like wet cement. I was stuck in it, and it was so heavy and it was hard to move, but…but if I stopped, the cement would set and I'd never be able to move again." That haunted look from the weekend was back in his eyes. "He was the cement," he went on. "Schmidt. He was all around me, crushing me and pushing me down, and I couldn't see and I couldn't move, and then it was like I could feel the cement flowing into my lungs and filling me up, and he was…_in_ me. And then I was gone. I wasn't me for a while, and I don't know…Then I woke up here."

His eyes were shining in the firelight with unshed tears, and Steve got up and went and sat on the arm of his chair, tugging him over to lean on him. "I'm sorry, Buck," he said softly. "I don't know what to say besides that. I'm sorry it happened, and I'm really sorry I left you to deal with it on your own." Bucky sniffed and Steve rubbed his arm. "But you're safe here and he can't get you anymore. And you're not on your own anymore either. I gotcha."

"Thanks, Stevie," Bucky whispered.

* * *

Now that he and Steve had cleared the air, Bucky felt like things could start getting back to normal. He should have known, really, that Steve was putting all the blame for what happened on himself. That was just what Steve did. But he'd come around now, and Bucky had gotten him to talk to the other guys, and once Steve realized they didn't all hate him, that had helped. They were all still pretty shaken up by the whole thing, but, like he'd told Steve, at least they could all freak out about it together now.

They had a good two weeks off after what happened at the mine. Bucky spent a lot of time down by the punching bags, and that helped him sleep. Any time he started to feel that crushing, choking feeling of Schmidt's consciousness creeping into his, he would head down there and punch until his knuckles started to bleed. He broke three of his fingers once, he was punching so hard, but he was starting to feel like he was the one back in control of himself again.

They all had their coping mechanisms, and though everyone's emotions were still on the edge, they were all starting to get back to things like telling jokes or complaining about homework. Sometimes it felt a little forced, but it was starting to feel more natural again. Bucky didn't know how they were going to do once Phillips decided to put them back on the mission roster, but he decided not to worry about it for now and just focus on finding his feet again and making sure Steve and the rest of the guys did the same.

It was sort of weird keeping up with Vicki only through the mail now, and writing about what all was going on was hard to get out, but she had actually been a big help in helping him get back on his feet again. They'd never really talked about the bad stuff that happened to him on missions before—not in great detail anyway—and it had been kind of weird at first, but she'd been concerned and had really wanted to know, and she listened well and did what she could to make him feel better.

He spent a lot of time with Becky, too, and it was hard to feel too afraid of Hydra with his little Munchkin around. This weekend he'd promised to help her with some Quidditch moves—the lower classmen still had that informal league they played down by the lake—and he'd showed up to help her and found Esther and the rest of her team there as well. They all listened with rapt attention and tried all the moves he showed them with varying degrees of success, and there was a lot of whispering and giggling. A _lot_ of giggling. Steve had come along too—he was still awful on a broomstick, but he'd sat under a tree and pulled out his sketchpad, and Bucky was glad he was back to doing some of his normal stuff too.

"Thanks for your help, Jay," Becky said as they walked back up afterwards, resting her broomstick on her shoulder.

"No problem, Munchkin," he told her. "That was fun. I miss playing Quidditch sometimes. Although I don't think I've ever played a game with so much giggling." He'd come by and helped them out a few times before this, but he didn't remember that part.

"Well," Esther said sagely. "They don't usually giggle that much. But—"

"Ssh!" Becky cut her off.

Esther smirked in a way that made her look like Jim when he was up to something. "Sadie and Moira think you're really cute, and Eleanor was _really_ hoping that since it was warm today, you were going to take your shirt off."

"Esther!" Becky hissed, her face going red.

Bucky laughed, and even Steve chuckled at that. "So," Bucky said, grinning at Becky as she grew steadily redder. "Your friends think I'm cute, huh?"

"Steve too," Esther jumped in before Becky could say anything. "That's why Marie and Eve kept dropping the ball. They were watching him more than the game."

Now it was Steve's turn to turn red.

"Well, you know," Bucky said, looping an arm over Becky's shoulders. "I'd be happy to come down here and help you guys train more often. Anything for my adoring fans, and I'd be more than happy to do it with my shirt off next time."

"If you _dare_," Becky growled. "I will hex you until bats come flying out of your nose."

"Hey, if you don't want them looking at me," Bucky said. "I'll bring Steve with me and we'll take _his_ shirt off. Guarantee you they won't be looking at me then."

Steve was still blushing, but he laughed. "Would that be better than having your friends swooning over your older brother?" he asked her.

"No, it would not," she snapped.

"I don't think you should do that anyway," Esther said. "It might kill them."

They laughed all the way back up to the castle, although Becky got a little bit of her own back when they met Peggy and she made sure to tell her all about the gaggle of thirteen-year-olds who had crushes on Steve. Not that it bothered Peggy, but Steve went very, very red again.

They lingered at the table for a while after dinner, and Bucky was just debating whether he should go take a stab at his Transfiguration essay or take a long, hot shower before everyone else showed up and crowded the bathroom when Peggy cleared her throat.

"So," she began, taking a moment to stir her tea before saying anything else. "I know your last mission was…well, it was awful. I'm not trying to pressure you into another one if you're not ready, but if you think you might be up to it, Phillips has found something you could do."

"He requested us specifically?" Steve asked, nothing in his tone suggesting how he felt about it, but his good mood from earlier had clearly evaporated.

"There's someone else that can do it," Peggy said. "He won't be upset if you think you're not ready. He just wanted to give you the option."

"You don't have to decide right away," she continued when Steve nodded but didn't say anything. "There's time; you can discuss it."

"What's the mission?" Bucky wondered.

"We've got a line on a very powerful magical artifact called a quickstone. You can use it to speed up the process of making potions. Rains wants it for some of the experimental healing potions she's working on—some of those take a really long time to brew. And Hydra…Well, we've got word Zola wants it as well for…you know, the sort of stuff _he_ makes."

"Would we be looking for it, or stealing it, or…" Bucky asked.

"Stealing it," Peggy confirmed. "It currently belongs to a collector in Barcelona."

They both looked at Steve, who continued to look thoughtful, but didn't say anything.

"We'll think about it," Bucky told Peggy when the silence started to get awkward.

"Alright." She looked like she wanted to say more, but decided against it. She stood up and put a hand on Steve's shoulder, kissing him on the cheek before she left. He sort of half-turned towards her, vaguely acknowledging the kiss and looking very distracted.

"Steve?" Bucky asked after another minute of silence.

"I was gonna say no," Steve said quietly. He looked up at Bucky coldly. "Little late for that now, huh?"

"I, I just said we'd think about it," Bucky replied, a little taken aback by the bite in Steve's tone. "Besides, you weren't actually saying anything," he pointed out.

Steve huffed and shook his head, pushing himself to his feet and stalking away from the table. Bucky got up and went after him. He grabbed his arm as he caught up with him outside one of the empty Charms rooms. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Steve said, shaking his arm free.

"Don't give me that," Bucky snapped, matching Steve's tone. "You're pissed about something, and if you're not gonna tell me what it is, then don't take it out on me."

Steve opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again when a group of Third-Years came around the corner. He sighed and walked into the empty classroom and Bucky followed, shutting the door behind them. "Alright," Bucky said. "What?"

"We're not ready for this," Steve said, crossing his arms and leaning back against one of the desks. "Where do you get off deciding for the group that we are?"

"Where do I—You just decided for the group that we weren't! And I didn't say we were, I said we'd think about it. It seems like the kind of thing we should let the rest of the guys weigh in on. Maybe they _are_ ready."

"No, they're not!" Steve snapped. "We'd be going up against Zola. He's right under Schmidt; that—that is exactly the sort of thing he told us _not_ to do!"

"What, and you're actually _listening_ to him?!" Bucky asked unbelievingly.

"No! I just…It's a big step, and we need to start smaller. We can't just expect to go out and do the same kind of thing we did before like nothing happened. We're not ready."

Lightning struck Bucky's brain. "You mean _you're_ not ready."

Steve glared at him. "Fine!" he snapped. "Fine! Yes, _I'm not ready_! Okay? Call me weak, or pathetic, or a coward or whatever, but I'm not—I can't do this. I can't!"

"Steve, nobody thinks you're a coward," Bucky said. "We're all shaken up by this, man, and okay, if you're not ready for it right now, you're not ready, but we can't let him keep us down forever."

"Can't let him keep us down?" Steve parroted. "It's not like I lost a fight, Bucky! It's, this is _so_ much bigger, it—"

"I was there," Bucky reminded him. "I know it is."

"No, you don't! This isn't…You didn't see it, alright? What he did…"

Anger roared to life in Bucky's chest. He didn't _see_ it? What did Steve think he'd been doing with Schmidt in his head, having a picnic?! "Yeah, you're right, I'm sorry," he snarled. "Obviously _watching_ all that happen was the hard part. I clearly don't know what I'm talking about, he was only _inside_ my freaking head!"

Steve looked up at him like Bucky had walked over and punched him in the jaw, and for a moment, Bucky wanted to. Where the _hell_ did he get off…

"I didn't mean it like that," Steve said, all the fire gone from his voice. He deflated, closing his eyes and lowering his face into his hand. "I'm _so_ sorry, I…"

Bucky's anger died as quickly as it had flared up. "No, I'm sorry, I…" He shook his head, his face going hot. Did he really just say that? "That was way below the belt, I shouldn't've…"

"You were right, though," Steve said.

"No, I wasn't," Bucky said. He sighed heavily. He'd felt like he was doing okay, but evidently he hadn't gotten over this as much as he'd thought he had. "He got me last, remember? I didn't see everything you saw, but I saw enough. It was terrifying." He sighed again. "Having him in me was no piece of cake either. Why don't we just say it sucked all around?" He moved over and nudged Steve's arm. "I'm sorry."

Steve looked up, a mixture of relief and shame in his eyes—relief at Bucky's absolution, and shame at needing it in the first place. Bucky knew how he felt. "I'm sorry too," Steve said.

Bucky sat down on top of the desk across from the one Steve was leaning on. "Tell me what's really going on, Steve," he said. When Steve looked unsure, Bucky continued. "If you're not ready for a mission, then you get no judgement from me. But talk to me. We're helping each other through this thing, remember?"

Steve sighed and nodded, and after a minute he spoke again. "I know it…You said it wasn't my fault that Schmidt did what he did, and I know that, I just…" He sighed and ran his hands back through his hair. "I'm the Captain. I'm in charge of the team, and it's my job to keep everyone safe. And there wasn't a _thing_ I could do. I've, Bucky, I've never been so scared in my life. Not even in Zurich, that thing with Gray and the TB, I…I was terrified then too, but at least then I could do something. Schmidt almost killed you. Did you know that? He used your hand to pull your gun out of your belt and he put it under your chin and put your finger on the trigger."

Bucky felt a swirl of nausea in his stomach. He _hadn't_ known that.

"And I couldn't do _anything_," Steve said. "There was nothing I could do to get him out of you, or Jim, or Gabe, or anyone, and if he'd decided he wanted to kill you all right there in front of me, there wouldn't've been a single thing I could have done to stop it. And I can't stop thinking about it, and…" He sighed heavily, his shoulders sinking down under an invisible weight. "If we go out there and do this mission, and we pull it off and make him mad…If it was just me, I…If he'd said he'd kill _me_ if we keep pissing him off, that'd be one thing. But it's not me. He said he'd kill you. All of you. And if I…" He blinked several times against the tears forming in his eyes. "If I okay this mission and he bites back and hurts you all, I…I just…I can't," he finished in a broken whisper.

Bucky reached across the space between the tables and pulled him over into a hug. He didn't say anything, just held on to him until he stopped shaking. He got it. He really did, and he didn't know what to say to make it better. But he understood.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do, Bucky," Steve sighed. "I can't let him win, but I…I'm so scared." He leaned back and looked at him. "How are you okay with this? What happened to you was…" He shook his head. "How are you doing this?"

Bucky huffed a humorless laugh. "What makes you think I'm okay with it?"

"You keep saying, 'oh, maybe we are ready', and, 'we can't let him get us down', and stuff like that. You sound a hell of a lot more okay with it than I am."

Bucky drew in a deep breath. "Yeah, well, maybe you're not the only one I'm trying to convince." He bit his lip and sighed, and he wanted to smile when Steve looked up at him, but he couldn't. "I'm terrified, Stevie," he admitted. "Everybody keeps saying he can't get us like he did before, that that possession thing only worked in the mine. And maybe that's true, but how do they really know? They didn't think he could do something like that before he did it either. And even if he can't…" Bucky swallowed down a knot of fear in his throat. "He's Hydra, Steve. There's a hell of a lot more he can do."

Steve was looking at him sympathetically, and Bucky swallowed hard. "But I made a promise," Bucky went on, not as steadily as he would have liked. "Hydra needs to be stopped, and I promised myself that they were never _ever_ going to be beat me. And sometimes—like right now—that promise is the only thing keeping me from calling it quits and just curling up in a little ball and hiding under my bed and crying for a week." He sniffed and swallowed down another knot in his throat. "I don't wanna go back out there. But I have to." He felt his cheeks burning with the shame of what he was about to ask, because it wasn't fair, but he had to. "Please don't make me do it alone," he whispered.

Those big arms of Steve's wrapped around him and pulled him in, and if they got much tighter they might crack a rib, but Bucky hadn't felt this safe in a long time. "I won't," Steve whispered fiercely in his ear.

Relief coursed through Bucky's soul, but he swallowed down a sob. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know it's not fair of me to ask you that—"

Steve's grip got tighter and it got a little harder to breathe. "You're not asking me anything I didn't already promise I would do," Steve replied, his words shaking with conviction. "You're just reminding me I said it. End of the line," he declared. "End of the line."

He held on a little longer, then let go and pulled away. "They haven't beaten us yet," Steve asserted. "And they're not going to. You ready to go piss Schmidt off some more?"

Bucky smiled, still scared, but determined now. "Let's give him hell."

It was early enough in the evening, they decided they would try to track down the other guys and go ahead and see what they thought about the mission. To Steve's surprise, they all seemed to be on board. Nervous, sure, but willing to go.

"A good fight always makes me feel better," Dugan said with a smile that was just a little bit less confident than normal. "I'm itchin' to get back out there."

"Odds far too big for us have never stopped us before," Monty told them when they found him. "Say the word, Captain."

When they found Gabe, he took a little while before he responded. "To tell you the truth, I don't know if I'm ready to go again," he admitted. "But," he continued, holding up a finger and cutting off Steve's assurance that he didn't have to. "I think I need to do it. Not because everyone else is doing it, but because if I don't make myself do this, I don't think I'll ever get back out there. And the fight's not over yet."

"Hell, yeah, I'm scared," Jim said. "But if I don't get out there and face it, I might be scared forever." He clapped Steve on the shoulder. "I'm in. Because I want to be," he added, eyeing Steve shrewdly. "You start thinking you're making me do this, I'll have Sarge punch you."

Jacques took the longest to decide. Considering that Schmidt had gotten him first and been inside of him the longest, that was more than fair. "D'accord," he said at last. "J'y vais. Hydra…" Anger clouded his face and he shook his head, descending into a string of colorful expletives that were, quite frankly, impressively creative once Bucky managed to translate them. The gist of the rant was that he was scared, but Hydra didn't want him to do it and so that was exactly why he would—he hated Hydra more than he was ever going to be afraid of them.

"Are you sure?" Steve kept asking every time he got an answer from one of them. Bucky knew he didn't want anyone to feel like he was pushing them, but he finally tugged him aside and told him to quit asking that.

"You gotta trust your team, remember?" he said, echoing his words from their first mission—one that seemed like centuries ago. "Besides, at this point in our lives, if they didn't want to, you know they'd tell you."

"I know," Steve sighed. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Here, come with me," Bucky said, tugging him towards the main doors.

"Where are we going?"

"Just follow me."

"Bucky, it's almost dark."

"Yeah, but we don't have to be in the dorm until nine," Bucky said, leading him across the grounds.

"Pretty sure that doesn't include wandering around outside," Steve argued.

"We're not wandering. And if they lock us out, we can look at sneaking back in as stealth training."

Steve gave up on arguing and followed him down to the training area. Parking him in front of the punching bags, Bucky handed him a couple of strips of tape. "Wrap your hands," Bucky told him. "I know going out on your bike helps you think through stuff," Bucky went on as Steve did as he was told. "But I think this could help too." He pointed at the bag. "Whatever's eating you, just picture it right there. What Schmidt said, what you're afraid might happen, crap you can't stop seeing…" He patted the middle of the bag. "Imagine it's right there and just beat the hell out of it."

For a second, Steve looked like he was considering arguing, but then he shrugged, stared at the bag for a second, then let fly with a punch that set it swinging on its hook.

"There you go," Bucky encouraged, and Steve grunted and took another shot. Then another one, then another one, and pretty soon he had a rhythm going, punching so fast his hands were a blur.

Bucky sat back out of the way and let him have some space. When he came down here to punch things out, he was usually here for a good thirty minutes, maybe even an hour if he had something really eating at him. Steve only went for about ten minutes, and maybe he was done, maybe he wasn't, but he had to stop because he punched a hole in the bag.

"So, we can talk to Howard in the morning about putting together a reinforced one of those for you," Bucky said as they walked back up. Steve was sweating and his knuckles were bruised and bleeding, but he looked a little calmer. "Did it help?"

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "Thanks."

They saw Peggy heading into the library, and Steve broke off to go and talk to her. Bucky headed for the dorm and his Transfiguration homework. Steve came back not too much later, complaining that the librarian had kicked him out, and Bucky chuckled and pointed out that super-soldier sweat was a little more potent than regular-guy sweat, and the library was kind of an enclosed space. Steve threw a shoe at him in response, but he was smiling again as he headed off toward the bathroom and a shower.

* * *

_So, the glue is still drying, but the pieces are all back where they should be. Tune in Friday to see the team get themselves back in the saddle. _


	69. Saguaro's Collection

_Alright, things have been really rough for the team lately, but they're ready to get back out there, and this will be a nice one for them. I promise. Some humor, some fluff, and an unexpected tiny dog appears.  
_

* * *

Steve sighed, pausing just before stepping out past the gates of the school. They were going to Barcelona. Everyone was going, determined not to let Schmidt beat them down. They were on edge, but they were going. They had this.

Steve was still scared, though. He was going to do this—he'd never given up before, and he wasn't going to let Johann Schmidt have the pleasure of being the first person to get Steve Rogers to back down, but he'd be lying if he said the thought of what Schmidt could do to his team didn't terrify him.

"You okay, Stevie?" Bucky asked him quietly.

Steve drew in a deep breath. Schmidt was good, but he wouldn't be bothered by them if they weren't too. They were good, and they were on their guard now. They'd be okay. "Yeah," he said. "I'm good. You ready?"

He saw the same nervous determination in Bucky's eyes as he felt in his own chest. "As I'll ever be," Bucky replied. He stepped out of the gate, eyebrows cocked in invitation, and smiled. "You coming?"

Steve smiled back and stepped from the safety of Hogwarts and its protective enchantments and out past the gate.

They apparated into the early morning quiet of the countryside outside of Barcelona. Spain wasn't particularly fond of Grindelwald, which made travel easier. Still, by this point, the Howlies (and Steve in uniform, in particular) were known well enough to be recognized on occasion, and since they were trying to get in and out without attracting too much attention to their thieving, they were incognito for this one.

"You doing alright?" Peggy asked him, sidling up beside him as they walked.

"Why do people keep asking me that?" he wondered.

She smiled. "Because you have perfectly valid reasons to be worried, and, as I keep telling you, you're not all that hard to read."

"It's not the Schmidt thing," he told her. "Well, mostly not, anyway. I'm still worried about what he might do, but we're committed now, and whatever he throws our way, we can handle it."

"So…" she prompted.

Steve sighed. "I miss my shield." Civilian clothes and disguises were all well and good, but he felt kind of naked without the shield.

She chuckled a little and twined her fingers through his, squeezing his hand.

It wasn't a long walk into town, and they were able to blend in fairly easily with traffic. They were headed for a swankier area of town—Saguaro, the collector they were after, was a wealthy, non-magical civilian. The quickstone had kind of a reputation in historical gemstone circles, which is how he ended up with it, though he knew nothing of its magical properties. (The S.S.R. wasn't in the habit of stealing from innocent civilians—they _had_ offered to buy it from him first, which he declined. They might have left it at that if not for the fact that they knew Zola wanted it too—a little burglary in the face of preventing a war crime seemed reasonable.)

One of the apartments across the street from Saguaro's house was up for rent, and the S.S.R. had snatched it up earlier in the week. The team set up shop there, and Jim and Gabe got to work setting up radios and communication gear, while Dugan and Monty set up security. "Alright," Jim said once the radios were going. "The stone is definitely in that house. And either it's insanely powerful, or he's got some other magical artifacts tucked in with the rest of his stuff."

He looked at Peggy and she shrugged. "It could be either. The stone _is_ powerful, but I have no idea what sort of energy it gives off," she said.

"So, we can check for other stuff once we get in there," Steve said.

Jim nodded. "In case he _does_ have more magic stuff in there, it should be easy to find, but nobody touch any of it until we check it out. We don't know what it is, so we don't know what it does."

Jacques snorted. "Vous n' tes pas obligé de nous dire ça. Nous n'avons pas onze ans."

He was still a little tetchy about being on the mission, so Jim let the comment go. "You especially, Cap," Jim said, pointing at him. "Remember, don't—"

"I know, I'm not supposed to touch the quickstone," Steve said. Since the stone's main purpose was to interact with magic that was already happening, nobody had been quite sure what that meant as far as Steve was concerned. The serum worked very differently than any spell or potion, but was still, technically, magic happening inside his body. They didn't _think_ it would do anything if Steve touched it, but it was probably safer not to find out in the middle of a mission. "How are we looking?" he asked.

Dugan reported no magic activity around the house, and Gabe was listening in on several channels that seemed to be calm for now. The magical radio wasn't picking up anything, encrypted or not, and that, combined with the lack of magic around the house, told them that they'd gotten there before whoever Zola was sending after the thing. Jacques snuck over and placed a couple of bugs around the main areas of the bottom floor, and they spent the rest of the day listening in and watching. The chatter they were getting was all in Spanish, and Gabe was decent at that—Jacques and his translator charm helped him out with words he didn't know, and Bucky chimed in occasionally.

"Where did you learn Spanish?" Monty wondered.

"We've got some friends back home who speak it," Steve said. The Garcias mostly spoke English when they all got together, but Steve and Bucky had picked up a little bit over the years. Granted, most of it was fairly domestic, which wasn't generally useful on missions, but since they were listening in to servants talking about the business of the house, some of it was coming in handy.

"Okay, so, lucky for us, Saguaro does not have any social obligations tonight," Gabe said after listening for a while.

"Wouldn't it be better if he was out at a party or something?" Dugan wondered.

"No," Peggy replied. "This way, he'll go to bed and then all the servants will too. If he was out, they'd have to wait for him to come home. As long as we're quiet, we'll have a lot more freedom to move once everyone's asleep."

Even though they only had to wait until everyone went to bed, it was still after midnight when the last light went off in the house across the street. They left the apartment in twos and threes, making their way across to regroup in Saguaro's backyard. The house had five stories, and the collection was right in the middle on the third floor. The house was too spaced out from its neighbors by the yard to allow for an easy roof access, and there was still enough pedestrian traffic around the front to make the back door their best point of entry. Jim did a quick check for spells, just in case, but it was nice to only have to worry about regular locks. Although, Saguaro _did_ have an awful lot of them.

"Any time, now," Monty said.

"Working on it," Dugan snapped. "There's, like, eight of them."

"Hey, um, did the report say anything about Saguaro having a dog?" Jim asked.

"Didn't say," Peggy said. "Why?"

"Well, there's one right there," Jim said, pointing behind them. "It won't stop staring at me."

Turning around, Steve spotted a fluffy yellow Pomeranian-looking thing sitting in the grass and watching them. "Not much of a watchdog," he said.

As if that had been some sort of invitation, the dog trotted over to investigate them. It seemed particularly interested in Jim's shoes. "Get off," Jim complained, pushing it away with his foot. "I said get off," he told it when it came back.

It yipped, offended, and Bucky turned to Jim. "Just pet it or something."

"No, I don't…I don't like dogs, okay? Can someone get it away from me?" Jim said.

Peggy scooped it up and scratched it behind the ears, and while it seemed happy with that for a moment, its attention soon returned to Jim. "You shouldn't've said that," Peggy told him, smiling. "I think she wants to come over and change your mind." The dog was wiggling and managed to free itself from Peggy's grip. It trotted back over to Jim.

"Seriously, go away," Jim said. The dog bristled and began to bark unhappily. Steve revised his earlier opinion of its ability to function as a watchdog—it might not have had the necessary territorial sentiments, but that high-pitched yap it had could wake up the neighborhood.

A light came on in the kitchen and they all dove for cover as the remaining locks clicked and the door opened.

"¡Mariposa!" came a woman's tired voice. "¡Tú pequeña bola de algodón traviesa, ahí estás!" The little dog continued to bark, dancing away from the hands that grabbed at it. The woman came out onto the porch, peering into the darkness where they were hiding. "No puedes ir a ladrar a las ratas a esta hora de la noche," she scolded, scooping up the dog. "¿Quieres despertar al vecindario?" She clucked her tongue disapprovingly and disappeared back into the kitchen. No one moved until the lights went back out.

"You couldn't've just pet the dog?" Dugan groused, wriggling out from under a bush. "I'm gonna have to undo all those locks again."

They all extricated themselves from their hiding places—Steve kind of wondered how Jim had gotten up the tree so fast—and returned to the porch. Eventually, Dugan got the locks open. They crept inside, locking the door back behind them.

"You don't think the dog sleeps in the kitchen, do you?" Jim whispered.

"Seriously?" Gabe sighed.

"Dogs freak me out, alright?" Jim replied.

"If the dog shows back up, we'll make sure to keep it away from you," Steve assured him, cutting in before they could really get going. "Are we still headed for the third floor?"

Jim collected himself and sent out a couple of spells. "Yep. Now that we're in, I can tell there's four separate sources of magic coming from up there. No way of knowing which one is the quickstone."

"Saguaro really has a knack for accidentally collecting magic, huh?" Bucky mused.

Monty shrugged. "It happens more often than you'd think. Lots of magical artifacts need more than just touch to activate, so they can wind up in places like this, or museums."

"We should rob a museum some time," Dugan said.

"No, we shouldn't," Steve replied, catching Peggy's smirk. "Jacques, lead the way." They didn't have a way of detecting non-magical alarms with magic, but Jacques was good at catching that kind of stuff. "Bucky, take our six, Jim…" Steve sighed. "You stay in the middle in case the dog shows up."

They crept out of the kitchen, looking for a set of stairs to take them up. Steve was glad when they hit the carpeted living room—the tile in the kitchen wasn't too bad, but then they'd hit the hardwood floor of the dining room, and he was very good at stepping lightly for a big guy, but the old floors had been awfully creaky. Even Jacques had coaxed a few squeaks out of the boards.

They made it to the second floor without incident. A light came on under one of the doors and they all had to scatter and hide again. Steve found himself in a bathroom with Monty. The approaching feet headed their way and as Steve dived for the bathtub and yanked the shower curtain shut, it occurred to him that this had been a terrible room to hide in. Monty had dived in the opposite direction from him, so he didn't see where he had gone, but when the light came on, there weren't any screams of surprise, so it would seem he was hiding somewhere.

The shower head above him was leaking, cold little drops of water landing in just the right place on Steve's neck to roll down the inside of his shirt, but he couldn't move for fear of his boots squeaking on the porcelain beneath them. Thankfully, whoever came in's visit was brief, and the footsteps were soon receding back down the hall. Steve waited to exhale until he heard the distant latch of a door.

"Monty?" he whispered, quietly pulling back the curtain.

"Over here," he replied, carefully unfolding himself from inside the linen closet. Good thing he was so skinny.

They regrouped and started quietly crossing the floor to the next set of stairs that would lead them up. Judging by the gentle (and not so gentle) sounds of snoring Steve could hear, this side of the house seemed to be where most of the servants slept. They passed a little common area, then froze at the rapid _tick-tick-tick_ hurrying across the floor. Mariposa appeared in the doorway, a red rubber ball in her mouth.

With a silent yelp of surprise, Jim was off the floor and up on Steve's back, legs locked around his chest. Unfortunately, the increase in height brought him into Mariposa's line of sight, and she yipped happily, dropping her ball and trotting over. She yipped again, and Bucky shot a silencing charm at her, cutting her off mid-bark. That seemed to surprise her a little, but didn't deter her, and she propped her front legs on Steve's calf, yapping soundlessly. Though she was a good four feet away from his ankles, Jim drew them up even higher.

"Mariposa!" Peggy whispered. The dog turned and then bounced away happily in the direction of Peggy and the ball she was holding up. Peggy waved the ball in front of the dog's nose, then tossed it into the common room it had come from. Mariposa bounded after it, and Peggy stood up and shut the door.

"Thanks," Jim whispered, lowering himself down to the floor.

Bucky shot Steve a look and rolled his eyes. Steve smiled and nodded back. They weren't mocking Jim's fear—it was just kind of ridiculous that Hydra had been their big worry, and here they were nearly getting their cover blown by a dog the size of Steve's foot.

They had to hide again before they got to the stairs—a sleepy servant stumbled by and disappeared downstairs—but they finally made it up to the third floor. They knew from earlier surveillance that Saguaro's collection room took up two thirds of the floor. The rest was a study, a library, and a couple of smaller display rooms. The stairs came out on the end by the library.

"Do we need to check any of the side rooms?" Steve asked quietly.

"Nope," Jim whispered back, pulling out his wand again. "All the magic's in the big collection room."

They crossed the floor and it took a little bit of finagling to get the locks to the collection room open without scratching up the ornate brass locks, but they managed. Inside, Steve could see why they hadn't run into any non-magical alarms in the rest of the house. They were all in here.

The room was huge, no walls breaking up the space, but free-standing shelves dotted the floor, contents displayed behind glass. Other displays were set up on wooden or marble stands, most with a glass cover, all with little security devices affixed to the stands, red or green lights blinking silently.

"So, what are we looking for?" Bucky asked.

"That's the tricky part," Peggy admitted. "We didn't know he had more than one magical artifact."

"We have to take them all?" Steve asked.

"I don't think so," Peggy said. "I don't know exactly what the stone looks like, but it's purple."

They spread out to look around, careful not to touch anything. Even though the room was dark, everything on display was lit with soft white lights inside the cases. Steve had to admit, it was an impressive collection. There were jewels, manuscripts, vases, figurines, pieces of pottery and engravings. He couldn't help letting out a low whistle as he circled one free-standing pedestal—the ancient book inside was inlaid with gold and jewels on the back, while the pages were open to an illustration of the Adoration of the Magi, illuminated with gold and silver leaf and delicate red and blue linework, still vibrant after centuries. He knew that wasn't why they were here, but his hands itched to flip the thick vellum pages and see what else they held.

He felt a little bit of magic stir the air, and he moved over in its direction. Something poked him in the back of the leg, and he jumped and spun around, and if he'd been wearing his shield, it would have shattered the glass casing of the shelf behind him. Mariposa was sitting on the floor with her ball, staring at him.

"How the hell did you get out?" he hissed. She yipped at him, though Bucky's spell was still working, because no sound came out, and he sighed and picked her up before she could wander off and scare Jim. "I don't suppose _you_ know where the quickstone is, huh?" He continued on around the side of the case and found Jacques and Bucky examining the same source of magic he'd felt.

"Why are you carrying the dog?" Bucky asked.

Steve shrugged. "She got out and followed us up here. Is this it?"

"C'est une pierre violette," Jacques said with a shrug. "Alors, peut-être?"

"Well, let's get it out and see," Steve said. He wasn't sure what the odds were that Saguaro would have more than one magical purple rock.

Jacques started fiddling with the alarm on the side, and it beeped softly then went dark. The door of the case stuck, so Steve handed Mariposa to Bucky and tugged and wiggled it and managed to pull it open. Jacques picked up the rock in his handkerchief and Steve closed the door.

"Peggy!" Steve hissed. She didn't know quite what the quickstone looked like, but she knew how to test it and make sure that's actually what it was. She was on the other side of the room. Just as he met her, the room lit up brightly, and a shrill, persistent siren split the air. They all stared at one another in alarm, then quickly dashed to hide again. With the room as open as it was, there weren't a lot of options for concealment. Steve ended up under a desk that held several cases of little fossils on top, curled up very uncomfortably in the tight space and with Peggy sitting on his chest.

He twisted a little bit and looped an arm around Peggy's waist, holding her in so she didn't fall out into view. It was a very tight fit, and it was kind of hard to breathe, curled up as small as he was with Peggy's weight on his ribcage, but if he took shallow breaths, he could manage. If he craned his neck, he could see the door reflected in the glass of a framed print on the wall.

The door burst open and a tall, angry-looking man appeared, his bathrobe fluttering behind him like a cape. "¿Quién está ahí?" he demanded. It was Saguaro. He stalked into the middle of the room, eyes raking the sides. Steve supposed they were all well-hidden enough for now, but what happened if he started searching? They'd have to stun him—they didn't want to hurt him, but they couldn't risk him making noise and drawing the servants, or anything that might lead to the police being called.

Saguaro started examining the displays more closely, circling and peering behind things, and Steve heard a flutter of movement. "Ah!" Saguaro exclaimed. "Mariposa! Mi preciosa pequeña, ¿comó entraste aquí?" He straightened up, the little ball of fluff in his arms. All the bite had gone out of his voice and he sounded like he was talking to a baby. "Una niña tan traviesa," he cooed. "¡Sí! ¡Sí, es usted!" Peggy put a hand over her mouth and stifled a giggle.

"Ven, mi amor," Saguaro said, heading for the door. "Ya es tarde. No más jugando en la colección de papa, ¿eh? Es hora de ir a la cama." He paused to turn off the alarm and the lights, then left, making playful little nonsense noises at the dog as he went.

Peggy shifted until she could roll off of Steve and out from under the desk, accidentally kicking him in the chin. "Sorry," she said.

Steve waved the apology off, too busy trying to extricate himself from the tight space for words. He stopped, red-faced, with only one leg free, the rest of him still tightly wedged under the desk. "Little help?" he croaked.

Peggy tugged on his arm and he pushed with the leg that was folded up under him, and for several long seconds, nothing happened, then he popped out and rolled across the floor. Peggy jumped out of the way just in time to keep from getting bowled over. Bucky was watching with a smirk, but said nothing.

"Good thinking, letting the dog go," Steve said to Bucky while Peggy examined the stone Jacques gave her.

"Little fluff ball had to be good for something," Bucky said.

"This isn't it," Peggy said, looking up from the stone.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"A light source. The more light it's around, the more it soaks up, and then when you say the right trigger word it lights up. Like a lamp without a plug or something."

"Better put it back," Steve told Jacques. That wasn't anything they needed to keep out of Hydra's hands. He sighed. "So, there's more than one magic purple rock here."

"Apparently," Peggy agreed.

They continued their search. Gabe found one of the other magic sources, but it was neither purple nor a rock. It was a little ivory carving of a skull, and looking at it made Steve feel a little queasy.

"We should take that," Jim said, peering over Gabe's shoulder.

"Why? It's not the quickstone," Gabe protested.

"Yeah, but it's super-dangerous."

"What's it do?" Steve wondered, eyeing the little carving that sat, seemingly benignly, on the shelf.

"Without examining it, I couldn't tell you for sure, but it's dark, and I think it kills people," Jim said. "You feel it too, huh?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at Steve. Steve nodded.

"How'd Saguaro get it in here without getting hurt?" Gabe wondered, clicking off the last wire on the alarm.

"He probably wears gloves," Steve said. He made sure his own were on securely, then gingerly picked up the little skull. "Standard operating procedure for historical artifacts." He dropped the skull into the warded box Jim pulled out. "Can we keep the quickstone in there with it?" That was why they'd brought the box.

"Probably not, but I've got more," Jim said, sliding the box into his bag. "I always have one or two—you never know when you'll need one."

"I think we've got it," Peggy called softly from one of the corners at the same time that a startled yelp came from Dugan and Monty's side of the room.

They all ran over to where Dugan and Monty were sitting on the floor next to a little display stand. A little purple stone and an intricate silver shape lay on the floor between them. "Are you guys okay?" Steve asked.

"What the hell was that?" Monty asked.

Dugan was staring at Monty with wide eyes. "Bloody hell," he whispered.

"Um, are you guys okay?" Steve asked again. They didn't look hurt.

"Well, that depends," Monty said, getting to his feet uncertainly. He was staring at his hands like he'd never seen them before.

"Monty, what's going on?" Gabe asked him.

"He's not Monty," Dugan said. He sighed heavily. "I am."

They all turned to look at Dugan. "What?" Steve finally asked.

"Apparently, that's a switching stone," Monty said, pointing at the stone on the floor. "And we…well…" He pointed at himself, then Dugan, then waved his hands back and forth between them.

"You guys just…swapped bodies?" Bucky asked. Monty, or, Dugan, actually, nodded. "That's a real thing?" Bucky wondered.

"Why the hell did you touch it?" Jim demanded. "How many times did I say that before we came over here? I shouldn't've had to say it! You should know not to touch random magical things! What are you, eleven?"

"Would you shut up?" Monty (in Dugan) groused. "We didn't touch it on purpose; I picked it up by the setting," he said, pointing at the silver shape on the floor. "And it fell out. I just caught it instinctively, and since nothing happened when it hit my hand, I thought it was safe. Dugan went to pick up the casing, and I handed him the stone to put it back, and when both our hands were touching it…"

"Yeah, that's how switching stones work," Jim sighed. He waved an irritated hand at them. "Touch it again and switch back."

Dugan picked up the stone and held it out to Monty. Monty put his hand over Dugan's, covering the stone. "Well, that didn't work," Dugan, who was apparently still Monty, sighed.

Steve groaned. "Okay, Jim, is there any way you can examine the stone without touching it? Maybe there's a trick to switching back or something."

"I'll see," Jim said.

"Peggy, please tell me the one you have is the actual quickstone," Steve said, turning to look at her.

"It is," she confirmed. She held out a flat, round stone about the size of her palm. Maybe it was the reflection off the white handkerchief it was resting in, but it looked like it was glowing a little.

"Good," Steve sighed. At least that part was going right.

"I'll get a box for it," Bucky said, picking up Jim's bag.

"Not the square one," Jim said, eyes still on the switching stone. "That one's got something in it already."

Bucky dug through Jim's bag. "How does he ever find anything in here?" he grumbled, pulling out the square, occupied box, several vials of potions, some little bags of powder, and what looked like a cat skull.

"I'm almost afraid to ask about the cat skull," Peggy said.

"You grind it up to put in a paste for animal bites," Jim said absently. "Freshly ground works better."

"Okay, while they're doing that, let's do a quick walk around to make sure there's nothing else we should check, or anything we should clean up," Steve said. He moved away with Jacques and Peggy. Gabe started to move with them, but Jim called him back. They searched the room quickly, finding nothing broken that needed fixing, and no other sources of magic to worry with. Steve kept glancing back in the direction of Jim and Monty and Dugan and the switching stone. It struck him as a very concerning problem, but Jim seemed more annoyed than worried. That was probably good.

"Anything?" he asked, coming back to where they were standing.

"I think we figured it out," Jim said, sounding pleased with himself. "Go," he said, pointing at Bucky, and before Steve could say anything, he grabbed on to the stone that Dugan (in Monty) was holding.

"Jim, what the hell?" Steve demanded as there was a small flash of light and the two of them staggered back slightly.

"Whoa, that was weird," Bucky, who was now in Monty's body, said. He looked down at himself. "Dude, you're skinny."

"What, no, I'm fixing it," Jim protested in answer to Steve's question.

"It looks like you just made it worse," he said.

"No, it…" He pointed at the rock. "That's an old one. When people first started making them, they didn't have it quite figured out yet, so this one is uni-directional. You can only switch one way."

"So, playing musical bodies is your solution to fix it?" Steve wondered. That sounded like a bad idea.

"Pretty much," Jim agreed. "Look, it sounds dumb, but it'll work, alright? Trust me, we worked this out."

"Okay," Steve sighed.

"It'll be fine, Stevie," and that sounded weird coming out of Monty's mouth.

"Alright," Jim said. "Gabe, switch with Dugan's body so Monty's in you." They did so. "Okay, now…" Jim consulted a little piece of paper. "So, Bucky's in Monty, and Monty's in Gabe, you two switch."

"Ah, good to be back!" Monty exclaimed, back in his own body.

"Yes, yes, very nice. Move out of the way," Jim instructed.

"Have we been on a weirder mission than this?" Steve asked Peggy. He was feeling a little better about it now that it seemed to be working.

"It's certainly up there," Peggy agreed, watching the body-swapping chain with interest. Gabe (who was in Dugan) and Bucky (who was in Gabe) had switched, putting Gabe back in his own body as well.

"Okay, last two," Jim said, and Bucky and Dugan switched back, then dropped the stone like it was a hot potato.

"Is everyone back where they belong?" Steve asked.

"Home again, home again," Bucky said with a smile. He brushed a hand across his upper lip. "Is that thing always that itchy?" he asked, nodding at Dugan's mustache.

Dugan was smoothing the mustache down primly. "This is a work of art, I will have you know. Just because you can't grow one this glorious is no reason to be insulting."

"Yeah, well, it wouldn't hurt you to shampoo your work of art every now and then," Bucky replied.

"Jim, do you have any more of those boxes?" Peggy asked. They'd found a box for the quickstone, and she was picking up the switching stone very carefully, making sure her handkerchief was covering all of it.

"Yeah, hang on." He dug through his bag and came up with one more. "We taking this too?"

"It's not particularly dangerous," Peggy replied, dropping the stone gingerly inside. "But it could certainly cause a lot of trouble."

"Definitely," Steve agreed. "How has Saguaro not had trouble with it before?"

"Well, the casing probably helped," Dugan said, picking up the silver framework and dropping it in after the stone.

"And I guess it doesn't do anything if you're the only one touching it," Jim finished.

"Alright, let's pack it up," Steve said. "Jacques, go check the door. I think Saguaro armed it again when he left." He turned to Peggy. "Did Phillips say when he thought Zola's guys might come after this thing?"

"Any day now," Peggy said. "Why?"

"Well, we just wanted the rock, not to hurt anybody. Hydra probably won't be that careful, and especially once they find out it's not here anymore…" He hated for Saguaro and his people to get hurt because of them. Depending who came for the rock, they might just kill everyone if the stone wasn't there.

"Yes, you're right," Peggy agreed. "We could ward the house once we're out."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He looked over at Bucky. Would warding it be enough? A skilled wizard could break through those eventually, and, if nothing else, Hydra agents were skilled. But they might back off if they knew the stone was gone in the first place. Steve swallowed hard. What he had in mind wasn't…well, it wasn't exactly easing back into messing things up for Hydra. Bucky gave him an encouraging nod.

"Okay, guys, circle up," Steve said. They all came together, looking at him expectantly. "We've got to ward this place, to keep them safe from Hydra once we clear out." They all nodded. That much was fairly obvious. Steve sighed. "Thing is, wards can be broken. These guys didn't do anything to get on Hydra's radar, but if they break in and find out what they want is gone, it could get ugly."

"What are you suggesting?" Gabe wondered.

"I'm thinking we need to make it obvious the stone's gone," Steve said. "So Hydra will know there's no point in even coming in here. If we leave some kind of…signature magic, or a message or something…"

Realization dawned around the circle. "They'll know it's not here because we got it first," Monty surmised.

"Yeah," Steve nodded. "I don't want to make this choice for you guys—calling attention to ourselves like that isn't exactly what I thought we'd be doing our first mission back in."

There was silence for a minute as they all digested that. Gabe smiled. "We've already jumped, Cap. Whether we slow the fall or not, we're gonna hit something eventually. May as well be on our own terms."

"In for a penny, in for a pound," Monty agreed.

"Let's do it," Dugan agreed.

"I've got just the right spell for it too," Jim said.

Jacques agreed enthusiastically, and Peggy very tactfully pretended not to be able to translate the exact words of his agreement.

"Okay," Steve said. "Let's head out."

Bucky came up beside him as they headed for the door. "You did the right thing, Stevie," he said.

Steve knew Bucky had thought so before he pitched it to the others. "Yeah," he sighed. "Feels like I just painted big target on our backs, though."

"You should be used to that by now," Bucky said with a smile. "Running around with a giant patriotic bullseye on your back."

Steve huffed a laugh.

"It really was the right choice," Bucky said again, patting his shoulder encouragingly. "We can handle the fallout."

Steve nodded. It was the right choice—the _only _choice, really—and they'd all made it. And they were tough. They _could_ handle it.

"I'm proud of you," Peggy said softly while they waited for Dugan to re-lock the door and Jacques to turn all the alarms back on. She twined her fingers into his and gave his hand a quick squeeze. "I know that wasn't easy."

Once Steve had stopped being an idiot and thinking everyone was mad at him, he'd been able to talk to Peggy about what happened and what he was afraid of. She'd understood and hadn't made him feel bad for not knowing what to do and for being afraid. She'd helped him find his feet without pushing him.

"Thanks," he said softly, squeezing her hand in return before letting go. He smiled. "Like they said, we may as well jump back in with both feet, right?"

She smiled. "I don't believe you've ever jumped any other way."

Quietly, they started making their way back downstairs. They had to stop and hide on the second floor again when two doors opened on opposite ends of the hallway. Steve, Gabe and Jacques all dove for the same closet, and Steve ended up jammed behind a hanging line of raincoats while Jacques curled up on the shelf above his head. There was just enough room for Gabe to stand in front of the raincoats, but if anyone opened the door, it would slam him into the wall.

Steve listened carefully, hearing the two walkers meet in the middle of the hallway just outside their closet. A soft, deep voice was met with a quiet, girlish giggle, then they all jumped in alarm as something slammed into the closet door and the unmistakable and surprisingly loud sounds of two people kissing came very clearly through the thin wood.

"Oh, my gosh," Gabe whispered. Jacques snorted softly from somewhere above Steve's head, and Steve studied the frayed hem of one of the raincoats very intently, trying not to listen.

Thankfully, after a few minutes the couple decided to take their meeting somewhere a little more private, and they moved further down the hall. Nobody moved until they heard another door click shut quietly. Gabe opened the door and slipped out, and Jacques slid down from his perch onto Steve's shoulders and then the ground.

"I thought," Dugan said as they regrouped. "That you said we'd have free reign of the place after everyone went to bed." He shot an accusing look at Peggy.

"Well, we would if they'd actually stay in their rooms," she replied.

They'd almost made it out—they were in the kitchen—when they had to hide again from a servant coming down for a late-night snack.

"Seriously, does no one sleep in this house?" Jim complained, unfolding himself from behind a sack of potatoes in the pantry.

They finally made it outside, and while Dugan reset all the locks on the door, the rest of them walked around the outside of the house, setting up every warding spell they could think of. Very carefully, Bucky levitated Jim up onto the roof so he could put a couple of wards up there and whatever that spell was that would tell Hydra the stone was gone.

"We good?" Steve asked when Jim was back on the ground.

"Yep." He dusted off his hands. "Nice job on the wards—they'll definitely have to think twice about going in there, but I don't think they'll have to go that far." He nodded up at the roof. "No question that the rock's not here anymore."

"Great," Steve said. At least Saguaro and his household would be safe now. "We ready to go?"

"Can we get something to eat?" Gabe asked. "I'm hungry."

"It's nearly three in the morning," Monty argued. "Where are you going to get food?"

Peggy hooked a thumb back towards the center of town. "If we head back towards the bars we should be able to find some street vendors selling food."

"Ooh, can we do that, Cap?" Jim asked. "I could so go for some churros right now."

"Oh, and maybe they have some of those kebabs like that Spanish place down by the pier," Bucky added.

"Okay, I wasn't hungry before, but now I am," Steve said. "Just remember, we're still not home yet, so keep an eye out, but, yeah. Let's go get some food."

* * *

_Meanwhile, in Germany…_

Arnim Zola stood very still, hoping that when Schmidt's wrath came, it would not land on him. At the moment, the head of Hydra was standing quietly, his face worryingly free of emotion.

"You're certain?" he said at last.

"Yes, Herr Schmidt," Zola replied. "That the stone is gone, at least. We cannot be one hundred percent certain it was them, but the magic does point that way."

Schmidt was quiet again. "I can't decide whether Rogers and his team are braver or simply more foolish than I thought," he said after a moment. He considered a moment longer. "It seems I will have to continue the lesson I began in the naquadah mine. Go and find Zwart. This can be his chance to prove he was worth keeping alive."

Zola nodded. After the fiasco in Salzburg, Hugo Zwart was in disgrace—had he not invented so many useful spells and potions, Schmidt would have slaughtered him where he stood after managing to capture and then lose Rogers. His intellect was the only thing keeping him alive, and Zola did not envy him his position—if he failed at whatever this scheme of Schmidt's was, even that would not save him from a slow, painful death. "Yes, sir," Zola replied, turning to go.

"And send me the twins as well," Schmidt added. That predatory smile that showed too many teeth was back. "Their particular set of skills will be very useful indeed."

* * *

_See? A good mission that went well; they had some laughs, they got some churros, and the team is feeling good now. Schmidt's not feeling so great about things, but that can wait until Monday._


	70. Schmidt's Revenge

_So, the mission in Barcelona went well, but Schmidt's going to have something to say about that...  
_

* * *

Bucky wasn't going to lie and say he wasn't worried about what Schmidt might do in retaliation for them getting in his way again, especially considering they'd more or less signed their names to the act. But the days stretched by with no new atrocities from the front lines, and everything around Hogwarts seemed peaceful, and he started to relax a little.

One day while the weather was still nice, several of the guys got together and started a game of baseball out on the grounds. Peggy and Kelly wanted to join in, interested in how the game worked, and Monty was incredibly skeptical about the whole thing but they made him play anyway.

Bucky hadn't actually played baseball in what felt like forever—he didn't think he'd been in a game since Steve had gotten big enough to hit a home run and make it all the way around the bases without collapsing. It was a lot of fun, and they'd attracted something of a crowd by the time they were done—evidently the American sport was quite the novelty.

"How you doing, Steve?" Bucky asked as they walked back up to the castle afterwards. He knew Steve had been worried too about repercussions from their last mission.

"Pretty good," he said. "Nothing's happened yet—I know that doesn't mean it won't, but…" He looked around and smiled. "Big picture, right? Days like this, this is what we're fighting for."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed.

The next few days passed quietly, and as they started to move into their second week of no word from Schmidt, they started to relax some more. Maybe things would be okay. They even started looking over intel for another factory mission. They hadn't found the next one yet, but they were close to tracking it down.

"Ja-ay!" Becky moaned, dropping down in a huff next to him at lunch.

"What?" he asked, unable to stop a smile at the over-dramatic whine she managed to work into his name.

"Professor Marsh wants me to come see her as soon as I'm done eating. In her office," she added grumpily.

"So…" Bucky prompted.

"So," Becky huffed. "It's lunch! I've got stuff to do!"

"You mean like your Herbology homework that you should have done last night?"

Becky ignored that. "She wants to talk to me about my homework I turned in."

"Having trouble with it?" Bucky asked. Transfiguration was one of Becky's harder classes.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I don't think I did very well on it. It's not my fault, though! She was sick yesterday, and I don't know why they got Professor Ellerton to sub for her, because he's the Care of Magical Creatures teacher; what does he know about Transfiguration? I didn't understand any of it." She slumped down dramatically onto the table.

Bucky chuckled. "Well, tell you what. If you're still having trouble after you talk to her, come find me after school and I'll help you with it."

"Okay," she said, brightening. "Thanks!"

Marsh must have explained whatever Becky was having trouble with pretty well, because his sister didn't come and find him after school. He caught up with Colin on the way to their planning session—they had pinpointed a factory in Austria, and they were gearing up to go this weekend.

"Hey, how's Alfie doing?" Bucky wondered.

"Nasty scar, but his leg's good as new otherwise," Colin said. "He's champing at the bit to get back out there."

"I thought you guys had already been back out. Weren't you the ones who ran that recon op in Dublin?"

"Yeah, that was us, but it was fairly low-key. Alfie, like a lot of the new lads, was hoping for a bit more action."

Bucky chuckled. He didn't know the kid too well, but everything he did know about him reminded him of Steve when he was little. "Well, they're new," Bucky allowed. "Give 'em some time, they'll look forward to the easier missions."

Colin laughed. "Too right."

The planning session for the mission went as well as they usually did. Although some details had gotten around after the Howlies' run-in with Schmidt in the mine, most of it had been kept classified. They hadn't told the 89th or 107th about Schmidt's threats to back off—it hadn't been directed at them, and they hadn't seen the need to freak other people out about it. Bucky could tell Steve was a little on edge about this one, since it was definitely more up in Schmidt's face, but the Howlies had all made their peace with keeping the fight going. And, as Steve had pointed out earlier, they'd already jumped back in. May as well keep swinging.

The mission itself went pretty well too. The factory went down, the prisoners got out, and Gabe found a letter up in the office that mentioned the Valkyrie. It was encrypted to hell and back, but it was something. The mission counted as a success, but they didn't come away completely unscathed. The 89th lost Peter, and the 107th came really close to losing Chris, but Rains was able to pull him through. Lots of injuries too, but minor for the most part. Aside from Chris, Steve's broken arm was the worst of them.

They came back and showered and fell into bed. Bucky got up the next morning to write his folks and let them know he'd come back from another one alright, but as he made his way up to the Owlery, the school seemed eerily quiet. Nearly all of the owls were out when he got up there, but he found a sleepy one in the back and persuaded it to fly off with the letter. It was still quiet when he came back downstairs. He ran into Peggy outside of the dining hall.

"There you are!" she said. "I've been looking for you—Phillips wants everyone in his office."

"Okay. Can I just—" He hadn't eaten yet, but as he pointed toward the dining hall, Peggy took his arm and pulled him away.

"No," she said. "Sorry. It's important."

He hurried along after her up the stairs to Phillips' office. Everyone else was already there, though they'd evidently hauled Monty and Jacques out of bed, as they were still in their pajamas. "What's going on?" Bucky asked cautiously, taking a seat at the table next to Steve. Whatever it was, it didn't appear to be good.

"It looks like Schmidt is making good on that threat he made back in France," Phillips said grimly. He tossed a piece of parchment down onto the table. "Professor Marsh is dead," he said. He gestured at the parchment. "That was in her hand."

Above a sketch of the multi-tentacled skull that was the Hydra emblem were the words, 'I did warn you'.

Bucky was glad that Peggy hadn't let him eat anything, although he wasn't sure he wasn't going to throw up anyway.

"When did it happen?" Steve asked softly.

"This morning," Phillips said. "The house elf who was bringing her breakfast, well…the body was still warm."

"How did it happen?" Steve asked. He seemed to be the only one capable of speech.

"Stabbed," Phillips replied. "There was some sort of poison on the blade…Nurse Rains assures me that it would have been very quick."

Steve lapsed into silence with the rest of them, his face hard and unreadable.

"How did they…" Bucky croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "How did whoever did this get in?" He was assuming they didn't know the culprit, or else they would have started with that.

"We don't know," Phillips replied. "All the wards around the school are still up. Haven't been tampered with. Perimeter spells don't record anyone unauthorized coming onto the grounds."

"Qu'en est-il des passages secrets?" Jacques asked. "Je ne connais que deux d'entre eux, mais il y en a probablement plus."

Bucky knew the school was kind of a maze, but this was the first time in six years here he'd heard of secret passages. If anyone was going to find them, though, it would be Jacques.

Phillips didn't seem surprised by it either. "Well, you've found half of them," he said. "There are four that I know of. I have the house elves looking them over."

"What do you want us to do, Sir?" Steve asked.

"For the moment, nothing," Phillips replied. "A murder investigation isn't exactly up you boys' alley. The S.S.R. has people on this. I just wanted you to be aware."

Steve nodded. They were all quiet for a minute, taking everything in. Bucky was still having trouble wrapping his head around the fact that someone had been able to sneak in and do this. Maybe Hogwarts wasn't as safe as everyone thought. Even though he couldn't get his head around it, his stomach was twisting itself into sick, nauseous knots. Professor Marsh was dead. Bucky had talked to her just yesterday. Transfiguration was his last class before lunch, and she'd been getting them ready to start practicing human transfiguration soon. She'd warned them it was a lot harder than anything they'd done before. There had been a spark of humor in her eye as she joked that if it wasn't so tricky, she'd have transfigured herself a new leg by now out of the artificial one she wore.

"I'm sorry, Sir," Steve said quietly, and his voice sounded normal, if a little tight, except to Bucky, who knew he was trying very hard not to cry. "This is my fault. He warned me, and I—"

"Shut up," Phillips said, and Bucky was surprised, not by the words, but by the fact that the tone he said them in was the gentlest Bucky had ever heard him use. "This isn't on you. Any of you," he added, casting his eyes around the table. "That was the other reason I wanted you all here. After the mine…" He paused, considering his next words. "I know you all had to make a choice. And you all chose to get back out there. It was the hard choice, and the brave choice." He cast his gaze around the table again, looking each one of them in the eye. "And the right choice. Johann Schmidt is crazier than a bag of wet cats—not one of you had the means to predict or control what he did next. But you have the means to end him. Caroline Marsh did not deserve to die so that skinless nutjob could try to show us how tough he is. And she does _not_ deserve for the best team in the S.S.R. to back down now."

Something stirred in Bucky's chest, quieting the sick feeling in his stomach. Something resolute and determined and angry. Phillips was right. Schmidt wasn't going to get away with this.

"Yes, Sir," Steve agreed, and he had some of that fire back in his voice.

"Yes, Sir," Bucky echoed, along with the others.

"Good," Phillips said, and he sounded pleased. "My people will investigate this, and once we have a target, you boys are up."

They left the meeting then, passing Phillips' special investigative Aurors coming in. Peggy and Steve were discussing the case as they walked out, and though Bucky itched to join them, he thought he should probably go check on Becky first. Jim had told him that Esther, as far as anybody knew, had been the last person to see Marsh alive—she'd gone in early to drop off a missing piece of homework to avoid the morning detention an hour later, and Jim shuddered at the thought that Marsh's murderer could have been hiding in the room then, just waiting for his sister to leave. Esther was certainly shaken up by that fact, and Becky was Esther's best friend, and Marsh was their Head of House, so Bucky should really go make sure she was doing okay.

"I'm really alright, Jay," Becky insisted when he found her. "I mean, I…" She sighed. "I don't think it's really hit me yet, you know? I've been all worried about making sure Esther's okay and everything."

Bucky nodded. He got that. "Okay." He looped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly, kissing the top of her head. "But when it does, you let me know, alright? I'm here for you, Munchkin."

She smiled. "Thanks." She looked back at the stairs that led to Ravenclaw Tower. "I should go check on Esther." She moved to go, then stopped. "Did you write and tell Mama you made it back okay from your mission?"

"I did," he assured her.

"Good."

"You know where to find me when you need me, right?"

She nodded. "I do. Thanks," she said again, then turned to go up the steps.

Bucky decided to head down to the punching bags. Phillips was right—they had to keep going until they got Schmidt, but that anger and fear and wondering if there wasn't something different they should have done was clawing its way around in his stomach and his thoughts were churning a million miles an hour.

Steve was already down there, and with as hard as he was hitting, Bucky wondered if Howard's reinforced punching bag might need some reinforcement of its own. Steve grunted a greeting at Bucky, but didn't slow down. Bucky bypassed the gloves, but he took the time to wrap his hands before getting down to work.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed when his head started to clear and his suddenly exhausted muscles started to give out. He staggered backwards and sat down heavily on a bench, breathing hard. He reached up a bloody, dirty hand to brush his sweat-soaked hair out of his face, and when he looked up, Steve was standing in front of him with a canteen. Bucky accepted it eagerly.

"Becky okay?" Steve asked, sitting down beside him.

"For now," Bucky said. "Hasn't really hit her yet."

Steve nodded. "You okay?"

"For now," Bucky said again. "You?"

Steve shrugged. "As I can be." He looked over at Bucky's hand. "You break anything?"

Bucky had been drinking with his left hand, and lifted his right experimentally. "Yeah."

"Lemme see," Steve said, reaching over for his wrist and pulling out his wand. Jim was the team medic, but little stuff like this, they all knew how to do. Bucky felt the weird sensation of bones snapping back together, then moved his fingers tentatively.

"Thanks."

Steve nodded, and they decided to head up to the kitchen to get something to eat. They'd missed lunch. The whole way up, they discussed the case, how they thought the assassin might have gotten in, and who it could be. When they got to the kitchen, they asked Winston if the elves had turned up anything in the secret passages, but he said no. They headed outside to eat, and were joined by Peggy, who sat upwind of them, and later by Dugan and Gabe. Though they discussed it from every angle they could think of, not one of them felt like they were any closer to figuring it out by the time it was getting dark. Bucky hoped Phillips' investigative team was having more luck than they were.

While the general student body didn't know about the note from Hydra, there was no hiding the fact that the Transfiguration teacher was dead. For the next several days, it seemed to be all anyone could talk about. It frightened and disturbed everyone, but, as far as Bucky could tell, the fact that something like this could breach the security of Hogwarts didn't seem to have occurred to a lot of people, particularly the younger students. That was good, he supposed. Better than just living in fear. There wasn't anything they could really do about it.

The older students, especially those involved in the war effort, had put together that this shouldn't have happened in the first place. They were a little more on edge, but there was an undercurrent of vigilance there. No one wanted to alarm the younger students, but Bucky noticed that wherever the younger kids were, there was always an older student around. He hadn't noticed it until he realized that he was doing it too.

To say things were slowly starting to feel normal as the days went on would be overstating it, but some of the edge was starting to wear off. Phillips and his team hadn't come up with any leads on the murderer, but he'd insisted he didn't want them stopping their work while all this was going on. They didn't have any missions on the docket, but they still kept up their regular meeting to go over intel.

That evening, Monty came over to where Steve and Bucky were working in the library. "It's happened again," he said in a low voice.

"What?!" Bucky hissed.

Monty nodded. "One of Phillips' investigators. Stabbed, just like Marsh. Same poison, no traceable magic."

"Does Phillips want to see us?" Steve asked, already closing his book and sliding it into his bag.

"No," Monty said. "Just wanted me to pass it on. He, ah, he does want to see _you_, though," he said to Bucky.

"Just me?" Bucky asked, confused.

"Yeah. You know how the investigators have been interviewing the students?"

Bucky nodded. They'd been talking to everyone, gathering as much information as they could.

"The last one this guy was supposed to talk to was your sister. She's fine," Monty hurried to assure him. "But she's sort of freaking out, and Phillips wants you to come and calm her down."

"Yeah," Bucky said quickly, standing up. "Yeah, I…"

"Go," Steve told him. "I'll clean all this up."

Bucky hurried up to Phillips' office, and as soon as he had the door open, Becky flung herself out of her chair and up into his arms.

"Jay!" she exclaimed.

"Hey," he said, wrapping his arms around her tightly. "Are you alright?"

"Uh huh," she nodded. "I just, I just…Jay, what if I'd been in there?!"

"Shh," he soothed, running his hand down over her hair as she shook. "I know. But it's okay, you're okay, you're safe."

He just stood there and held onto her for a few minutes, whispering reassurances and stroking her hair, and she started to calm down.

"You okay?" he asked her as she stepped back, crouching down so he was on eye-level with her and leaving his hands on her shoulders.

"Uh huh," she said softly. She sniffed and wiped her nose. "Sorry."

"Hey, it's okay," he assured her, squeezing her shoulders. "This is totally an okay time to be scared."

She smiled at that.

Phillips had remained over at his desk, knowing he wouldn't be any use making Becky feel better, but as she started to relax, Bucky saw him nod at Peggy, who'd been waiting with him. She walked over, resting one of her hands on Becky's shoulders. "If you're feeling alright, do you think you can tell me what you saw?" Peggy asked. "Anything at all. Even something small might be important."

Becky shook her head. "I wasn't there," she said. Her cheeks flushed just a little. "I was supposed to go and have my interview, but I was late," she admitted. "When I got there, all these Auror guys were outside the office, and they told me what happened." Her eyes started watering. "If I'd been on time, I…"

Bucky grabbed her and hugged her again. He looked over her head at Peggy, and saw the same thing in her eyes as he felt in his chest. He was _so_ glad Becky had been late.

He sat with her a while longer, then walked with her back to her dorm, stopping at the infirmary to get something to help her sleep. After telling her goodnight, and that she should come and get him if she needed _anything_, even if it was the middle of the night, he headed back down to Hufflepuff. Steve was waiting in their room, and Bucky quickly filled him in on what had happened.

"Wow," Steve breathed. "Man, it's a good thing she was late."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed, a knot forming in his throat. He hated to think what could have happened if Becky had been there. Would the murderer have waited, like they did with Esther and Marsh? Or would they both have been…

"I was thinking," Steve said, rousing Bucky from his thoughts. "Two people have been killed now. And Esther and Becky were both almost there."

"I'm not tracking you," Bucky said.

"Well, they're both related to someone on the team," Steve pointed out. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but what if that's another part of Schmidt's message? Showing us how close he could get to us if he wanted to."

Cold shot down Bucky's spine. "You're right. We have to…" He swallowed hard, unable to finish.

"We have to talk to Phillips," Steve finished for him, the same fear in his voice that would have been in Bucky's if he'd been able to talk.

They hurried back up to Phillips' office, but Phillips was way ahead of them. The same thing that had occurred to them had occurred to him too, and he'd acted quickly. Special defensive Aurors had already been dispatched to each of the Howling Commandos' homes to set up security for their families. Becky and Esther were going to be watched by a group of house elves Phillips trusted most, and Bucky felt that knot of fear in his gut start to unclench. Their family would be safe, and as far as inside the school went, Bucky was more than happy to put his faith in the house elves to keep his sister safe.

Now that there had been another attack, and it seemed this assassin hadn't just come and gone after Marsh, Phillips and the headmaster were enacting some new rules as well. Students were no longer allowed to go anywhere alone, and no one was allowed out of the castle after dark. Several students from the military units were pulled off active duty and given assignments around the castle, monitoring groups of students, checking spells and entrances, and running messages for the Aurors on Security. The Howlies had volunteered to help out with all of that as well, but Phillips had turned down their offer. He wanted them free to move once they had a plan of action. Still, he had told them, that was no reason they couldn't keep their eyes and ears open.

And so they watched. And waited.

* * *

Steve growled in frustration as he shifted in his chair, stretching his long limbs out. After the Auror had gotten killed last week, all semblance of normal life had shattered. Rules had been put in place to keep the students safe and secure, but Steve almost felt like they didn't need them. Everyone was so nervous now, no one felt like going anywhere alone. Even the most adventurous students were keeping well back from testing the boundaries. Especially after what had happened last night.

It had been six days since the Auror had been killed, and everyone was nervous and on edge—not because anything else had happened, but because _nothing_ had happened. There were no leads, no clues, nothing. This assassin was a ghost. But six days…Everyone was just starting to think things might be safe again.

Then they found Professor Caan.

He was dead, same as the first two, and the fact that someone had been able to kill the Divination teacher really shook everyone up. Of all the people on campus, surely he would have seen it coming. The fact that he hadn't drove another wedge of fear into everyone's hearts. This assassin could get _anyone._

After Professor Caan's death, all the students were confined to their common rooms except for classes and meals. It wasn't that great a change anyway—people had been gravitating to the common rooms anyway, feeling safer there. Steve hadn't had much time to talk to Peggy, since she was up in Gryffindor, but she told him she'd heard from Phillips there were rumors of shutting the school down. No students had been harmed yet, but if this kept up, it was only a matter of time.

"Would they really send people home?" Bucky wondered. "I mean, it's supposed to be safer here. I know there's a murderer running around, but if the security measures here are slowing them down, think how much worse it would be outside."

"I don't know," Steve sighed. "I mean, maybe people would be safer—if Schmidt has reasons for the people he's killing, at least people who aren't targets would be out of the way."

"Who says he has reasons?" Bucky countered. "Maybe this is what he wants. He's freaking everybody out, hitting us where we live, and if we all go home, that's the Howlies split up and out of his way."

"I don't know if Phillips would send us home," Steve mused. "He keeps saying he wants us free for missions."

"Yeah, but we're still his students," Bucky reminded him. "You know how seriously he takes threats to the students."

"If he sends us home, there's nothing stopping us getting together and hitting back at Schmidt," Steve said. "Peggy's got intel—we could still meet up somewhere and run our own missions."

"If Schmidt didn't kill us, Phillips would," Bucky said, though he was smiling.

A burst of laughter drew their attention from the corner they were sitting in. Over by the fireplace, Dave was surrounded by a crowd of First-Years, telling them some kind of story. Jacques was acting it out for them, dramatically and to great hilarity. Another knot of students was sitting in a circle by the big window, playing some kind of game that involved quick movements and hand gestures, and whoever lost had to sit in the middle. Morris was running some kind of card game tournament over in the other corner, and Helen Thorpe was coordinating a circle of knitters who were working together to make something really big. In spite of the worry gnawing at his stomach, Steve found himself smiling.

"This is why we're gonna win," he said, turning to Bucky. Because they looked out for each other. They stuck together. They were scared but they didn't let it take over. "This is why we have to win."

Bucky nodded at him and smiled, and they left their worried discussion and went to join the rest of their house. Whatever story Dave was telling, Bucky evidently knew it, and he jumped in so that Jacques didn't have to play every character by himself. Steve walked over to join the circle of knitters. Helen smiled at him, but several of the Third-Year girls eyed him skeptically until he pulled out his own set of knitting needles. It turned out they weren't making anything in particular, just something they could all work on together. It was a mishmash of colors and patterns, and Helen told Steve she imagined it would end up being a rug, or they might hang it on the wall opposite the fireplace. He picked up a section of it and started adding a block of bright green yarn, and after a little while he felt a pair of eyes on him. The girls had all stopped staring once they realized he knew what he was doing, but these eyes were on his back. He turned his head to see one of the Second-Year boys, Geoffrey, watching him curiously.

"Hey, Geoff," Steve said.

"Hi, Steve," Geoff replied. As if Steve's greeting had been an invitation, he scooted closer.

"You want to join in?" Steve asked. "We can scoot over and make room."

"Well, I…I don't know how," Geoff said.

"You want to learn?" Steve asked.

Geoff considered. "Well, I mean, it looks interesting. If it's, you know, if it's alright…" He looked around the circle, and Steve realized that he was the only boy in the group.

"Sure, it's alright. I'm here, aren't I?" Steve said. He held up his section of knitting to demonstrate. "And you know who taught me how to knit?" he asked, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

Geoff leaned in. "Who?"

Steve nodded over towards the fireplace. "Bucky."

Geoff's eyes went wide, and he studied Steve skeptically for a minute.

Steve smiled. "Boys can knit too, you know."

"Of course, they can," Helen declared from the other side of the circle. "Can't they, ladies?"

A chorus of agreement rounded the group, and Geoff smiled, sliding in to the circle only a little hesitantly next to Steve.

"Julia, why don't you go and sit over by Geoff?" Helen said. A Fourth-Year girl got up and came over, picking up a spare set of needles on her way. "She's quite a good teacher," Helen told Geoff. "You watch her, and you'll soon have it figured out." She smiled across the circle at Steve.

"So, what was that thing you guys were making?" Bucky asked later as they headed to bed.

"I still don't know," Steve admitted. "I think it was a circle when they started, but it's kind of more spiderweb-shaped now."

"You think they'll kick me out if I try to join in tomorrow?" Bucky asked. His knitting abilities, though valiant, were still thoroughly unimpressive.

Steve laughed. "Nah. Becky's not here to pass judgement. Knit away."

Bucky laughed and turned off the light.

The next morning, things were a little tense again as everyone prepared to leave the safety of the common room and move around the castle. Everyone left for breakfast in large groups. After the meal, the First, Second and Third-Years all knotted up in their little groups with their older supervisors to be escorted to classes, while the older kids clumped together and set off. Bucky just had time to check in with Becky before leaving with Steve, Peggy and Jim for Potions.

They talked quietly as they went, though Peggy didn't have a lot of news for them. She was still a student too, and had spent most of yesterday confined to Gryffindor Tower with the rest of her house, much to her annoyance.

"At least we know we're safe for a little while, though, right?" Jim said. "I mean, what happened to Caan was, well, that was two days ago. If whoever did it is still around, we should have three or four more days until something else happens."

"That has got to be the most depressing encouragement I have ever heard," Peggy said.

Jim shrugged. "Hey, I'm taking what I can get. And, you know, maybe they'll get caught before then."

The morning classes went on without much incident. They had Transfiguration today, and Professor Applegate was going over the rules of human transfiguration with them. They'd done that with Marsh, but Applegate had never taught pre-N.E.W.T. level classes before, and he wanted to make sure they really knew what they were doing before they actually started transfiguring each other. Steve was okay with that. His last experience with being transfigured had not been the greatest, and he wasn't in a great hurry to repeat it.

There was lunch and then afternoon classes, and then it was back to the common room. "Steve!" a voice hissed, and Steve turned around to see Becky hovering in the door of an empty classroom.

"Becky? Aren't you supposed to be going back to Ravenclaw?"

"Yeah, but, Steve, I have to tell you something first."

"Okay." Steve looked around. Bucky had just gone around the corner with the rest of the group. "You want me to go get Bucky?"

Becky shook her head. "No, I don't want to take too long and get in trouble for being late back. You can just tell him when you see him."

"Okay," Steve said. "What's going on?"

"It's about the people getting killed," she said, stepping back into the classroom and motioning for him to shut the door behind him. She grimaced nervously. "I think I saw something."

"You did? What? What happened?"

She didn't seem sure what to say. "It's probably stupid," she said.

"No, it's okay," Steve assured her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Any little thing could be important."

She nodded. "Well, it _is_ a little thing. _Two_ little things, actually." She stepped closer, fiddling with a button on the front of her coat.

"Two things?" Steve asked, leaning in. She was being awfully antsy.

"Two things," she confirmed. She smiled suddenly in a way that Steve didn't think he'd ever seen her smile before, and it was very unnerving. "And we're very good at what we do."

Before Steve could open his mouth to say anything, there was a sharp, burning pain in his abdomen. He looked down to see the hilt of a knife protruding from just below his ribs. Becky's fingers were wrapped around it.

"Up and under the ribcage," she said sweetly. "Skinny little arms like mine, you're never going to get the force you need to break bones." She twisted hard on the knife, and Steve felt it move inside his chest and he gasped in pain. He felt like he should step back or push her away or…or _something_, but nothing would…staring down at her in shock seemed to be all he was able to do.

"After I move it around a little, tear things up faster," she went on. "Then I yank it out." She did so, very forcefully. "And there's nothing to keep all that blood inside anymore."

Steve was having trouble moving, and his brain felt sluggish and uncooperative, making it hard to think. Why couldn't he move?

Becky placed a small hand on his chest and pushed, and he found himself unable to offer any resistance, toppling over and crashing down hard onto the floor. She stepped into his line of vision and smiled, waggling the knife back and forth. "Poison on the blade, remember?" she said, as if she knew what he was thinking. "It'd be awful stupid of me to go up against a big guy like you, otherwise."

She crouched down so that she was closer to his face, tracing the knife along his jawline. "Much as I'd like to see this through to the end, if I'm not back up in the Tower with everyone else, there are going to be questions I don't want to answer. So, I'll go, and leave you to your last two minutes on earth in peace. Fun fact: I got your lung, so you're probably going to drown in your own blood before the poison or the stab wound kills you. If that helps."

"Why?" Steve croaked. There were so many questions racing through his mind, but that was all he could get out.

"Orders," she said sweetly, patting his cheek. She grinned wickedly and stood. "Hail Hydra."

She walked out of his line of vision and distantly Steve heard the slamming of the door and the click of the lock. Becky…Becky couldn't be Hydra, she couldn't, it didn't make any sense. She'd been right about the knife, though; he could feel his lung filling up with blood, and it was getting really hard to breathe and his vision was starting to go. He was going to die. He was going to die and Becky…Whatever had happened to Becky, whatever Hydra had done to her, no one was going to save her if he died, because no one would know. But he couldn't…He couldn't move and there was no one…

A hazy memory flickered through the lethargic fog in his brain. Nurse Rains in the infirmary. They'd come back from the mine, and she'd needed help. Willow hadn't been there, but she called her, she just called her name and she came. Could he…maybe he could…

"Winston," he croaked, his throat straining with the action, and whatever was keeping him from moving had crept up into his throat and he didn't think he'd be able to say anything else. Even that had barely gotten out, and it wasn't very loud. But it worked. There was a sharp snap of magic in the air, and Steve felt the little elf's presence more than he saw him. He couldn't see much of anything.

"Master Steve!" Winston exclaimed.

Steve gurgled in response, the blood in his lung coming up into his throat, making him cough and cutting off his air.

He heard Winston talking but he couldn't understand it anymore. He could feel his body shutting down, motionless limbs growing heavy, and all the pain fading away and maybe he was moving, maybe he heard people talking, but maybe he was imagining it all. It was so hard to tell. It was so quiet. So cold. So…

Nothing.

* * *

_Well. That's not good._

_See you Friday!_


	71. Bad To Worse

_Schmidt did promise consequences for being ignored, and he got in a pretty good hit in the last chapter. But what now? Can the team roll with the punch and get back up swinging? And what's going on with Becky?  
_

* * *

Steve woke up feeling disoriented. He didn't remember why he was asleep, or why his chest hurt, and it took him a minute to decide that he actually _was_ awake, and then another one to remember how to open his eyes. Where was…This wasn't his room. He was, oh, wait, this was the infirmary, he'd woken up in here enough to recognize it. Had he gotten hurt on a mission? He didn't think he'd been anywhere since the factory in Austria. Rains had fixed his arm already from that. And he felt like if he'd been on another mission and gotten hit in the head hard enough not to remember it, it would be his head that hurt right now, not his chest.

Memory shot through his head like a bolt of lightning. Becky. Hydra had done something to Becky, and she'd stabbed him.

He jerked on the mattress, panic adding to the pain in his chest when his arms wouldn't move. Or his legs. Or…nothing would move. He tried to open his mouth to call out and no words would come, nothing but a rasping, choking sound. What had happened to him?!

"Easy, now, love. Easy," and there was Nurse Rains' voice, familiar and calm cutting through his panic, but what the hell did she mean, 'easy'? He couldn't move!

"Steve? Steve, love, I need you to look at me. Look at me," she said, and Steve's darting eyes landed on hers. "There we are," she encouragingly. "You're going to be alright, Steve, I promise," she told him. "I know you can't move, and I'm sorry, I know that's frightening, but it's only temporary."

Steve started breathing a little slower. Temporary?

"That's right, just breathe," she said. "You were attacked, do you remember that?"

Steve couldn't say anything, couldn't move enough to nod, but he blinked slowly in affirmative.

"It was the same as what happened to the others," she told him. "A knife with poison on the blade. The serum in your cells protected you long enough for Winston to get you up here, but it was a near thing. A very near thing." She put a hand briefly to the side of his face. "I've healed the stab wound, but the poison is still in your system. I've given you a potion to counteract it, but it will still take some time before it's all out. Once it is, you'll be moving and talking again, I promise," she assured him. "Tomorrow morning at the latest, if not sooner."

Steve was able to rein his panicked breathing in the rest of the way. There was still a lot to freak out about, but panicking wasn't going to help. How could he tell anyone what had happened if he couldn't talk? No one was looking at any of the students as suspects. If Becky, or whoever was controlling her, wanted to strike again, no one would see it coming, just as Steve hadn't. How long had it been? Could she have gone after someone else already? There was a whole house full of people up in Ravenclaw for her to choose from.

"Steve," Rains asked. "Do you remember who did this to you?"

Unable to do anything but blink, he did so rapidly. Yes! Yes, he did!

She nodded. "Will you give me your permission to see your memory of it?"

He blinked again quickly. Of course! A Pensieve. They could figure it out that way, without having to wait for him to talk again.

Rains nodded again and pulled out her wand. She touched it carefully to the side of his head, trailing away a wispy, silvery memory behind it. She must have been waiting for this, because a small Pensieve was sitting ready on the stand beside his bed. The memory floated up and into it, and Steve couldn't turn his head enough to see it, but he could hear the tiny, distant words, and see Rains' face as she watched it. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth in horror as he heard the echo of the knife slamming into his chest.

"Dear God in Heaven," she whispered. She swallowed hard, composed herself, then jumped to her feet. "Willow! Winston!" she called sharply. The sharp snap of magic heralded the arrival of the two elves.

"Willow, I need you to go and fetch Professor Phillips at once," she told her. "Whatever he's doing, he needs to stop and come here _now_. Winston, you go and find Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter. It's just coming on time for dinner—check the dining hall first. Don't say what's happened. This is, bloody hell, this is much messier than I thought, and we don't know who's listening. Be discreet, both of you. I'll explain everything when they get up here, just get them here."

"Yes, Mistress," the elves murmured before disappearing.

Rains pulled in a shuddering breath, then dropped back into the chair next to Steve's bed. "Oh, I'm so sorry, love," she said. She turned and met his eyes, and Steve stared back, hoping she could read the questions blazing in them. How the hell had Hydra done this, and would Becky be okay?

"I've no idea what this is," she said, picking up his hand and squeezing it gently. "Oh, but that poor girl—whatever this is, it's not her choosing to do it, I know. We'll sort this," she declared, squeezing his hand tighter. "I promise. Whatever they've done, we'll fix it."

Steve felt tears springing to his eyes, and he blinked them away furiously. He could only pray Rains was right.

* * *

Bucky hurried up the stairs to the infirmary, the sound of Peggy's footsteps pounding steadily just a few steps behind him. He had no idea what had happened—Winston had been cryptic as hell about it—but given how urgent Winston had sounded and the fact that they were rushing towards the infirmary, well, it could hardly be good.

Rains waved them over to the far corner, and as Bucky approached, he realized Steve was laid out in the bed she was sitting next to. He picked up his pace, hearing Peggy do the same. He'd been concerned when Steve hadn't shown up in the common room after class, but he'd thought maybe he'd gone to talk to Phillips or something. Not seeing him at dinner had ratcheted his concern up into worry, but then Winston had shown up before he'd had time to do anything about it.

"Steve!" he exclaimed, dropping down to sit on the mattress beside him. He was lying there under the blanket and he, well, he _looked_ okay, aside from the expression on his face. He twitched a little and sort of grunted when Bucky sat down, but didn't react otherwise.

"He can't talk right now," Rains said.

"What?"

"He was attacked," she told them. "The same as the others. The poison from the knife is still in his system."

"Will he be alright?" Peggy asked before Bucky could.

"He will," Rains said. "He should be able to get out of here in the morning."

"Someone…someone tried to kill him?" Bucky asked. He looked down at Steve, and when Steve's eyes met his they looked…sad.

"Do we know who it was?" Peggy asked.

Rains opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. "He let me copy his memory of the attack," she said, not really answering the question. She gestured at a small Pensieve on the bedside table. "I don't…" She sighed again. "You'd best see for yourselves."

She prodded the swirling contents of the bowl, and Steve's memory flickered to life across its surface. He was talking to Becky, and a cold knot twisted in Bucky's stomach. Had Becky been there too? Had she gotten hurt?! He cast his eyes quickly up and down the ward. Steve was the only one here. That was…He didn't know if that was good or not.

The memory played out, and Bucky heard Peggy gasp as they saw Becky pull a knife from inside her sleeve and ram it into Steve's chest. Bucky just stared, unable to breathe or think, his eyes fixed on the Pensieve and watching his world fall apart. "Hail Hydra," he heard his little sister whisper.

Bucky flew up off the bed, whirling to face Steve. "What the hell is this, Steve?!" he demanded, furious fear expanding so quickly in his chest he expected his ribs to crack from the strain of it. Why would Steve show them something like this? What the hell was he thinking to…to… The pained look in Steve's watery eyes told him he wished it wasn't real just as much as Bucky did. Fury drained away just as quickly as it had risen, leaving only the fear behind. Bucky didn't realize he was shaking until his knees gave out from under him and someone caught him and steered him to sit back down by Steve's feet.

"Steady now, son," Phillips told him, letting go of his elbow once he was sure Bucky wasn't going to fall over.

"What…" Bucky stammered. "What…" He didn't know where to start, what to ask. What had Hydra done to make his sister do this? How had they…He choked on a knot in his throat and forgot how to breathe for several seconds. His sister. Hydra had his baby sister. And Steve…Bucky's hand groped on the blanket until he found Steve's ankle underneath it. They'd taken his sister and they'd almost taken Steve. He'd nearly lost everything today.

Bucky tightened his grip around Steve's ankle, and Peggy moved over so she was sitting beside him, her hand solid and steady on his arm. "This is something that can be undone, isn't it, Sir?" Peggy asked Phillips, voicing the questions Bucky couldn't put words to. "If it's the Imperious Curse or something…"

"If that's what it is, yes, we can undo it," Phillips confirmed.

"If?" Bucky asked worriedly.

"It might be something else entirely," Phillips said. "Actually, I'm inclined to think that's not your sister at all."

Bucky felt Steve shift a little on the mattress, and he looked up at Phillips, at once hopeful and terrified. "What do you mean, Sir?"

"I think we're looking at a Hydra agent posing as your sister. A hell of an actor," he admitted. "But the Imperious Curse…That changes how you act, not what you know. The knowledge she would need to pull this off—not just today, but three other times, and each one of those against a qualified, specially trained wizard? No." He shook his head.

That made it better, somehow, that Becky hadn't been cursed and forced to do this, but… "If this is a Hydra agent using, I don't know, Polyjuice potion or something, what…" Bucky swallowed hard. "Then where's the real Becky?"

"That's what we need to find out," Phillips replied. "I'd bet good money she's still alive," he went on, as if he knew what Bucky's next question was going to be. "These duplication spells need things like hair, or fingernails, or something like that, and they'd have to keep her alive to get it. They might even be thinking they could use her for leverage when this all goes south, like it's about to." He rested a hand warmly on Bucky's shoulder. "We'll bring her home."

Bucky nodded.

"In the meantime," Phillips continued. "Let's go catch this one. Miss Carter?"

"Yes, Sir," Peggy said, springing to her feet.

Bucky moved to follow her, but Phillips held out a hand. "Stay here. We'll get her."

Bucky nodded. He wanted a piece of whoever this was, but he didn't think…No, Phillips was right, going into a fight against someone who was pretending to be his sister was a bad idea. He would hesitate, he knew, because what if it really was her? If it was really her, just with her head messed up or something, and he wouldn't be able to shake that doubt, wouldn't be able to react like he should, and someone could get hurt. No, he…he couldn't do it. And Steve was stuck up here, not able to move or talk, and he had to be pretty freaked out. Bucky would wait with him.

"We'll bring her up here," Phillips said. "Gwyneth, have something ready, and then we'll need to seal the ward off for a little while. Oh, and pull the curtain around Rogers' bed. She thinks he's dead—let's start off letting her think she still has that card to play."

Phillips and Peggy left, and Rains got up and tugged the curtain around Steve's bed, promising she'd be back soon. Bucky sighed and realized he was still holding on to Steve's ankle. He wasn't sure if he could let go.

"I'm sorry, Steve," Bucky said, turning on the mattress so he could look at him. "I didn't mean to…" He shouldn't have yelled at him. Steve blinked slowly and managed to smile just a little bit at him, understanding in his eyes. "Are you okay?" Bucky asked. Steve blinked again, uncertainly this time. Yeah, Bucky got that. "Can I see?" he asked, nodding towards Steve's chest. Steve blinked again and Bucky untucked the blanket, pulling it down gently until what was left of the wound was exposed.

There was a raw, ugly line on the left side of Steve's chest right under his ribs. There was no blood, and the skin had all knit back together, though it was still knotted and swollen. If it had happened after classes, then it had been less than two hours ago. Rains had healed up the damage, but the scar would take a little longer. Bucky patted him gently on the side, then pulled the blanket back up.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

Steve managed a slight incline of his head. It hurt a little.

Bucky nodded. With Steve being unable to say anything, it seemed unfair for Bucky to just let everything building up in his chest come spilling out, and his breath hitched in his throat a couple of times as he tried to swallow down the knot that had formed there. Going off of Marsh's murder, it had been over two weeks that this fake Becky would have been here. Two weeks. And he'd had no idea. What had Hydra done to his little sister in the meantime? Had they hurt her? Was she sitting there, locked up somewhere, scared and alone, hoping her big brother would come find her and wondering why it was taking so long? Did she think he wasn't coming?

A sob welled up and escaped his throat before he could stop it. Steve twitched on the mattress and Bucky looked over at him. His eyes were watering too, knowing exactly what was going through Bucky's head. He jerked his head in uncoordinated invitation, and Bucky let go of Steve's ankle and moved up the mattress to sit next to him. He tugged Steve up into a sitting position, carefully, in deference to his still-aching abdominal muscles, and leaned him over so that his head was resting on Bucky's shoulder.

"We're gonna find her, Steve," Bucky said, stretching an arm around his shoulders and hugging him, whether to make Steve feel better or to anchor himself, Bucky wasn't quite sure. Steve was just as worried about Becky as he was, Bucky knew. He'd been looking out for her like she was his sister too, long before he'd moved in with them. "If Schmidt thinks he can lay a finger on our sister, he'd better think again." Bucky tightened his grip on Steve. "We're gonna burn them to the ground."

* * *

Peggy took a minute to compose herself, squaring her shoulders back before opening the doors to the infirmary. She and Professor Phillips had successfully apprehended Rebecca Barnes, or whoever was pretending to be her, in one of the strangest battles Peggy had been a part of.

It hadn't been a battle per se—the imposter didn't know her cover had been blown, and so she had been summoned to Phillips' office just as any student might have been. There had been a brief fight then, and, had Peggy and Phillips not had the element of surprise, Peggy imagined that it could have gotten very ugly indeed. Some of the moves that girl knew…No, that definitely wasn't Rebecca.

Still, Peggy found herself reluctant to go in there and begin the interrogation. The girl wasn't Rebecca, but she certainly looked like her. The anger and the brutality in the way she'd fought back had been very jarring to see on that sweet, usually smiling, face.

Peggy rubbed her arm gingerly as she walked. Not-Rebecca had nicked her with her knife—just a tiny little cut—and her whole arm from the elbow down had gone numb. No wonder Steve couldn't move. (She swallowed down the nauseous realization that that was the same knife that had nearly killed him.) She approached the far end of the ward, where Phillips and Rains were getting the prisoner situated in a chair with restraints on the arms and legs. That must have been what Phillips meant when he told Rains to have something ready, and why in the hell was there a chair like that in the infirmary?

Peggy ducked behind the curtain to where Steve and Bucky were waiting. She saw a bit of relief settle into Steve's eyes as she appeared, though he didn't say anything, apparently still incapable of speech. She sat down on the mattress on the side opposite Bucky.

"Is everything okay?" Bucky asked nervously.

Peggy nodded. "We got her. She put up a hell of a fight, but she didn't see us coming, so it didn't last long. And unless your sister has been taking some sort of assassin training in her downtime at home, then Phillips was right, it's not her," she added, trying for a little levity.

Bucky kind of smiled back. "So, now what?"

"Now, we see if we can get her to talk," Peggy said. "Do you want to come, or…?"

Bucky didn't seem sure. He looked down at Steve, and Steve must have regained a little bit of motion, because he managed to nod in the direction of the curtain. He'd be fine here on his own. Bucky still didn't look sure. Peggy could sort of imagine how he felt. Her older brother, Michael, had been out of school for years now, married and working, and Francis, the little one, had a few years yet before he came to Hogwarts. If it had been either of them out there in that chair—or someone doing a hell of a job impersonating them—she didn't know that she'd be eager to see it either.

"Yeah, alright," Bucky sighed reluctantly. "You need anything, Stevie?" he asked, looking back down at Steve. Steve shook his head.

Peggy brushed Steve's hair back with her good hand and leaned in to kiss his forehead. "I'm glad you're alright," she said softly, and she had not given permission for that little tremor to work its way into her voice, but Steve and Bucky both tactfully ignored it. "Don't worry," she told him. "We'll sort this out, and you'll be on your feet in time to help bring her home," she said, resting a hand on the side of his face. She got a bit of a smile for that. "If you need to go to sleep, you can," she told him. Despite everything that was going on, he did look like he was fighting to stay awake. Considering the blood he'd lost and everything that must still be in his system, it was hardly surprising. "We'll fill you in on anything you miss," she promised.

He blinked in affirmative, but seemed determined to stay awake a while longer. Peggy stood and walked out from behind the curtain with Bucky. Phillips and Rains had set up the chair well away from Steve's bed, though near enough to be in earshot. Its occupant was shifting, as if testing the restraints keeping her in place. Her angry expression vanished as she saw them coming, and suddenly she was thirteen-year-old Rebecca Barnes again.

"Jay," she pleaded, her voice small and scared. "I don't understand what's happening. Let me out, please, I didn't do anything!"

Bucky's face twisted up painfully, but he shook his head.

"Please, make them stop," she begged, her little voice on the verge of tears, and even though Peggy knew it wasn't really her, it still broke her heart. She could only imagine how much it hurt Bucky. "They're hurting me, Jay, why…why are you letting them do this to me?"

"You don't get to call me that," Bucky growled. "I don't know who the hell you are, but you don't get to use that name."

Her tears vanished in an instant, and that wicked smile was back. "Worth a shot," she said with a shrug. "That does get under your skin, though, doesn't it? So easy," she said, clicking her tongue in mock disappointment.

"That's enough," Phillips snapped. "Who the hell are you?"

"Right now, I'm Rebecca Barnes," she replied sweetly.

Rains was standing to the side, waving her wand over the girl in the chair. "She really isn't," she said. "Though it isn't Polyjuice potion she's using."

That surprised Peggy. This girl had been pretending to be Bucky's sister for a long time—even though it had to be taken every hour, Polyjuice potion was still the most reliable way of getting such a good copy that wouldn't deteriorate.

"Oh, you clever little minx," Rains said, still waving her wand. She looked up at Phillips. "She's a Metamorphmagus."

"A what?" Bucky whispered to Peggy.

Peggy stared at the girl, slightly impressed in spite of herself. "A wizard who can change their appearance at will. It's a really rare genetic anomaly. She doesn't need potions or spells or even a wand, just…" She waved at the girl in the chair. "She can make herself look like anything."

"Hmm," Phillips mused. He stepped back, made several quick motions with his wand, and a shimmery silver bubble appeared around the girl and the chair. He shot a quick look back at Peggy and Bucky, who were watching him curiously. "Chair's not much good if she can turn into anything. Metamorphmagi aren't limited to human forms." He turned back to the girl. "I assume that's how you've been able to get past security? Transfigure into a mouse or something?"

She shrugged. "Nobody bats an eye at the local rodent population. And it certainly came in handy when I needed to get away from those house elves you set on 'protective duty'. They're persistent little suckers, I'll give them that."

"So, who are you?" Phillips asked again.

The girl just stared at him.

He leaned in, placing his hands on the arms of her chair—evidently the silver bubble was meant to keep her from going anywhere if she got out of the chair, but it didn't prevent them from crossing it. "You're not Rebecca Barnes, but you are Hydra, and I'm willing to bet you know what I can do. Are you going to answer my questions, or am I going to have to go in there and find the answers myself?"

"Alright, alright!" the girl said quickly, raising her hands in surrender as much as the restraints would allow. "You really don't have to do that. I'll cooperate." All her toughness was gone, replaced by genuine fear.

Phillips smiled and stepped back. He nodded at Rains, and she stepped forward with a small vial, containing what Peggy assumed was Veritaserum. "You'll forgive me if I want to make sure," Phillips said to the girl. She glared at him, but it lost a lot of fire coming through the fear that was still there, and she nodded, opening her mouth and allowing Rains to put several drops on her tongue.

"Okay," Phillips said when Rains stepped back. "Name."

"Yvonne Koenig," she replied.

"Koenig?" Phillips asked, raising an eyebrow. "As in…"

"As in Hydra's top engineer, Walther Koenig," she said with a smile. "My father's been with Hydra since the beginning. As have I."

"Mm," Phillips mused, taking a moment to evaluate. Peggy had heard the name 'Koenig' before in some of her reports. She'd never seen anything about him having a daughter. But then, if the girl was a Metamorphmagus, someone like that would be awfully hard to keep track of.

"And I assume you're not actually thirteen years old, Ms. Koenig?" he asked.

"Twenty-one," she replied. "Although it has been fun coming back to school. I did always wonder what Hogwarts was like."

"What are you doing here?"

"I should think it was fairly obvious by now."

"Who sent you?"

"Herr Schmidt himself," she said. She rolled her head to look over at Bucky, grinning wickedly. "He did warn you to stay out of his way," she said. "And if you're not going to listen…" She shrugged theatrically. "He had to try something a little more…drastic."

Peggy shuddered. Kendall had said that, when they'd caught him.

Yvonne chuckled. "Just think, 'big brother'. If you had listened when he warned you the first time, they'd all still be alive."

Bucky was staring at her coldly, but the way his throat shook when he swallowed told Peggy he was just barely holding it together. She stepped a little closer to him, putting her hand on his arm for support and pulling him back several steps. "It's not your fault," she whispered as Phillips went on with his questioning.

"People keep saying that," Bucky replied. "She's right, though, Pegs," he said miserably. "If we had listened, he never would have sent an assassin here." He swallowed hard. "He never would have taken my sister."

Peggy sighed. "Maybe you're right," she said sadly. This was an act of retaliation, plain and simple, and Schmidt wouldn't have done it if there had been nothing to retaliate against. "But it doesn't mean you were wrong to do it," she insisted. "And if he hadn't done this, he would have done something else. Bucky, Schmidt wants to hurt a lot of people, and you're helping to stop him doing that." She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing his hand. "Standing up to him, it's not easy, but it's right." It was true, but she might have had a harder time saying that if it had been her little brother in that chair.

"It's my baby sister," he whispered. "She shouldn't have to suffer for the choices I make."

"No," Peggy agreed. "She shouldn't. And she won't. We're going to get her back."

"But what if…"

"Bucky, look at me." He turned his miserable eyes to hers, steel blue brimming with tears. "I swear to you, on my life, that we are going to get Rebecca back." Fury was burning in Peggy's chest now. How dare Hydra stoop so low as to threaten _children_ to get what they wanted? How dare Johann Schmidt kidnap an innocent little girl to try to manipulate the only people that really threatened him? How _dare_ he?! "We will find out where she's gone if I have to skin Yvonne Koenig alive to do it. And we will bring. Her. Home. I promise."

Bucky stared into her eyes for a long minute. Then he sniffed, swallowed, and sniffed again. "You're right," he said, and his voice was a little shaky but there was resolution there now, the same fire she'd seen in his eyes when they'd found Steve after Zwart had taken him. He drew in a deep breath and nodded. "We'll bring her home."

"And Hydra's going to burn for it," Peggy said.

"Hell, yes, they are," he agreed vehemently.

They moved back to where the interrogation was still going on.

"Why Marsh?" Phillips asked. "Did you target her for a reason, or were you just trying to cause chaos?"

"Oh, I had my reasons for everyone," Yvonne confirmed. "Marsh had to be first, though. She was how I got in."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember that day she was sick?" Yvonne asked. "That was me. She'd been down buying some supplies for class in Hogsmeade. I slipped something into her lunch—just enough to make her sick. Then I came up to campus—as a bird, in case you were wondering. It would take forever to walk up here on tiny little mouse legs. Anyway, I slipped into her quarters, incapacitated her and replaced her. After calling Rebecca in to talk to me, I got her out of the way, got her off campus, and no one's going to stop and question a professor, are they? Then I came back up here, modified Marsh's memory so she wouldn't remember the incident, and took Rebecca's place. I gave myself a few days to settle in, but Marsh still had to go just in case anything came back to her. Memory spells really aren't my strong suit."

"You've—you've been pretending to be my sister for three weeks?" Bucky asked. He sounded like he wanted to be sick.

"And doing a marvelous job of it, don't you think?" She grinned. "I must say, you're a very good big brother. Much nicer than mine."

Bucky shuddered, and Peggy was sure he was thinking of all the times he'd hugged or kissed Yvonne thinking she was his sister. Although…

"How _did_ you do such a good job of impersonating Rebecca?" Peggy asked. "Metamorphmagi can copy bodies, not memories." And whatever else she'd been, Yvonne had done an _excellent_ impression of Rebecca. She'd talked like her, known the names Bucky used for her and how to react, what to ask, what to say and how to say it.

"I didn't have to copy her memories," Yvonne said. "I could have, I suppose, a simple Imperious Curse and a demand for permission to copy all her memories would do it, but can you imagine how tedious that would be, having to sift through all of that? Trying to dig it all out anytime someone asked me a question? No, far too messy."

"So what did you do?" Phillips asked.

She gestured towards her neck. "It's the necklace." She didn't appear to be wearing one, but Phillips reached forward and found a chain under her hair and pulled it out, revealing a necklace with a green jewel that had been tucked under her shirt.

"Rebecca doesn't really wear jewelry, so I had to hide it," she explained. "But it's got a special spell on it. As long as she's wearing the other one, we're linked. I can see all of her memories without needing permission, and search through them when I need something as quickly as if they were my own."

Peggy felt a bit of the tension go out of Bucky as Yvonne said that, and the worried lump in her own stomach loosened its grip just a bit. If she had to be linked to Rebecca to have access to her memories, that meant that wherever Rebecca was, she was still alive.

"Are you hurting her?" Bucky demanded. "This linking thing you're doing, is it hurting her?"

"You know, I don't know, I've never been on her end of it," Yvonne said. "I wouldn't think it would be physically painful, no, but it didn't look very pleasant."

Bucky snarled and lunged forward, grabbing for her necklace. Phillips stepped forward and caught him before he could reach it. "Leave it," he told him.

"What the hell, Sir?!" Bucky snapped. "If that thing is hurting my sister, then—"

"Maybe it is, but it's also keeping her alive," Phillips said, cutting him off. "If it's linking her to Koenig, what do you think the people on the other end are going to do when we break that link?"

Bucky froze, sick realization dawning on his face.

"I'm sorry," Phillips said, letting go of his arm.

Bucky nodded, stepping back.

Yvonne chuckled. "Nice try," she said.

Phillips turned back to her. "So, you got Marsh," he said, bringing the questioning back on track. "That was to cover your tracks. Caan too, I'm guessing?"

"Well, you always want to be careful around someone who can see the future, but, no, actually he was by special request from Schmidt," Yvonne said. "He's gotten in his way more than once, you know."

"And Whitehouse?" Phillips asked. That was the name of the S.S.R. Auror who'd been killed.

"I _did_ actually make it to that interview with him," she said. "And after what he did in Munich, Schmidt wanted him gone too."

"So, you had two targets, but did you have any other purpose in coming here aside from getting Barnes' sister and causing chaos?"

She smiled. "Well, that would certainly be enough, but yes. I had a whole list of targets."

"Who?" Bucky asked. They were guessing Steve had been one of them, since she hadn't brought his name up yet.

"Who do you think?" she replied. "Who around here is pissing Schmidt off the most?"

"You came here to kill the Howling Commandos?"

"Mm-hmm." She looked up at Phillips. "You too, if I could get away with it, although they were more important than you." She grinned at Bucky. "I was saving you for last. Oh, the look on your face, watching your little sister kill you?" She laughed. "Can you even imagine?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "I can." Peggy imagined it would have looked very much the way Steve's had done in the Pensieve when they'd seen her stab him.

Yvonne laughed. "Ooh, I was waiting for that. I guess I should have done you first. But the big guy was really the one I was worried about."

"The big guy?" Bucky asked. "You mean Steve?"

She nodded. "It seemed wisest to get him out of the way first."

She was looking at them all like she was waiting for their reaction. Bucky grinned triumphantly and stepped forward, grabbing her hands and pinning them to the arms of the chair with enough force to make her squeak. "Yeah, it would have been," he said. "But you should have waited to make sure you'd actually finished the job."

"What?" she replied, shock etched across her face. "He's still alive?"

"How do you think we caught you?" Bucky sneered.

The strangeness of seeing all of this on Rebecca's face was overpowered by how absolutely wonderful that expression of shocked defeat was. Peggy was going to treasure that look for a long time to come.

"Now," Bucky growled. "Where the hell is my sister?"

Yvonne swallowed hard. "Zwart has her," she whispered.

"Zwart?" Bucky demanded. "Hugo Zwart?" She nodded. "You gave my little sister to Hugo Zwart?!"

"Aah!" Yvonne cried out, not quite loud enough to cover the noise of one of her wrist bones snapping as Bucky's grip tightened. "He's the one who developed the memory spell," she gasped. "It's his last chance with Schmidt, to make up for losing Rogers."

Bucky growled and shoved her chair back as he stood, whirling and stalking away.

"You're going to tell me everything," Phillips said. "Where he is, how he's protected, and how to get in."

Yvonne started talking, and Peggy turned and followed Bucky. "I'm gonna kill him," he said. Peggy could feel that angry magic vibrating under his skin again, even from a few feet away. "After what he did to Steve, and now that, that _monster_ has Becky, I…" He yelled and let the magic go that was building up inside him, sending one of the beds crashing into the wall. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders back, then smoothed his hair down. "He's going to die this time, Peggy," he said coldly.

"Good," Peggy said. About time.

She went back to check on Steve, giving Bucky some space to pull himself back together. Steve was still awake. "You heard everything?" she asked, coming to sit beside him.

He nodded, his expression making it clear that he was just as angry as Bucky. Maybe more, considering he had a better grasp of the sort of things Zwart could do.

"We're going to get her back, Steve," Peggy said. "Phillips is getting all the information now, and by the time you're back on your feet, we'll have a plan and the rest of the team will be ready to go."

Steve nodded, though something still appeared to be agitating him, the way his breath was hitching. "What is it?" Peggy asked. She looked down at his chest. "Does it hurt? Do you want me to get Nurse Rains?"

He shook his head, though his face was clearly straining with the effort of trying to do something. A light clicked on in Peggy's head—he wasn't struggling to breathe, he was struggling to try to _speak_. "Are you trying to say something?"

Steve nodded, and he managed to get his mouth open, though no sound came out.

"Nurse Rains said it might take a bit for speech to come back," she reminded him. "Can it wait?" He shook his head. "Is it something to do with Yvonne?"

He nodded. "Alright," she said. She didn't know any way to speed up this process, nor how to read his mind. Getting him to write it down was out of the question too, since he hadn't managed any voluntary movement below the neck yet. "Okay. Go slowly. Deep breaths. Try just one syllable at a time." She didn't know if he could make _any_ syllables, but it was a place to start.

Steve nodded, taking a minute and drawing in as deep a breath as he could manage. Still, no sound came out.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, coming through the curtain. "Are you okay?"

"He's breathing alright," Peggy assured him. "He's trying to talk. It's something important."

Bucky sat down on the other side of the mattress. "Okay," he said. He locked his eyes on Steve's, and Peggy wondered if whatever Steve was trying to say, if he could say it in that way he and Bucky seemed able to communicate without words. "Go ahead, Stevie."

Steve drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes in concentration. For a long minute, his lips were moving, though his vocal cords were clearly not cooperating. Then, "…mmm. M-m-mo…" He swallowed hard, tried again. "M-m-m-more."

"More?" Peggy confirmed. Steve nodded.

"M-m-more…n…w'n." The last noise was nearly lost in a rush of exhaled air.

"More than one?" Bucky translated. "More than one what?" he asked after Steve nodded again.

Steve huffed, frustrated. He jerked his head at the curtain, at where Yvonne was sitting beyond it. "S-sss-ssaid…w-w-_we_," he whispered.

Peggy and Bucky looked at each other for a moment before it suddenly clicked.

"Bloody hell," Peggy whispered. "There's more than one of them."

* * *

Bucky sat back on the mattress, leaning against Steve as he did so. There was more than one of them. Steve had failed to get any more words out after that, but he'd nodded at the Pensieve. He'd been talking about his conversation with Yvonne before getting stabbed, and Peggy had realized that it was all right there, recorded for them. Bucky wanted nothing more than to scrub the image of his little sister trying to murder his best friend from his brain, but here he was watching it again for the second time in less than an hour.

Steve had been right. They'd missed it the first time around, lost in the shock of what they were seeing, but it was right there. She'd said it, clearly thinking her secret would follow Steve to his grave. There were two of them.

"No wonder she's being so cooperative," Bucky said. "What better way to keep from getting hurt than to look like you're giving up everything?" Apparently, that was one of the downfalls of Veritaserum—while Yvonne had been holding back, she hadn't actually lied, either. "Whoever the other one is, they can lay low for a while and then keep right on going, and if anyone asks her about it later, she can just claim they must have sent in someone else after she got caught."

Steve jerked slightly on the mattress beside him, pulling in a sharp intake of air and blinking furiously. Bucky smiled and brushed his hair back. "Hey, it's alright, Stevie. You can go to sleep now." He looked exhausted. Whether it was the poison that was still in his system, or the potion Rains had given him to counteract it, maintaining consciousness was a battle he was losing. He must have been fighting tooth and nail to stay awake until one of them came back in, desperate to get them the information that he'd remembered. "You did good," Bucky assured him, proud of him. "We can handle it from here."

Steve blinked up at him tiredly.

"Get your rest," Bucky told him. "We're gonna need you back at one hundred percent when we go after her. Get some sleep. We'll track the other one down."

Steve nodded and allowed his eyes to close. Bucky kept carding his fingers back through his hair until his breathing evened out and he sank deeper into the pillow, finally asleep. He looked up to see Peggy watching them with a soft smile. She leaned in and kissed Steve's cheek, then stood up.

"Alright," she said. "Let's go find this other one."

Bucky nodded. "Where do we even start, though?" Yvonne had only been caught because Steve hadn't died when he should have. "It could be anybody," he said. "Probably another student, since no one was looking at them before, but it could be a teacher or an S.S.R. agent, or, hell, one of the house elves." He arched an eyebrow at Peggy. "It could be you."

"Or you," she pointed out.

Bucky nodded. "Will you be offended if I run a lie detector spell?"

She smiled. "Under the circumstances, no. As long as you let me do the same."

He did smile at that. "Deal." They checked each other over, and they both came back clear. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't really think it was you, I just…"

"It's a bit hard to trust your instincts after that," Peggy finished for him, nodding back in the direction of Phillips and Yvonne, who was still wearing Rebecca's shape. She smiled. "No offense taken."

Bucky nodded, glad she hadn't minded. "So, at least we know we can trust each other. I'm thinking we should get the other guys up here—check them all out—and then go from there."

Peggy agreed, and they decided to send the house elves for the rest of the team, since they should all be back in their common rooms by now. They showed up quickly, were a little skeptical at first, but allowed themselves to be scanned for deceptive spells, and then Bucky and Peggy quickly filled them in.

"Bloody hell," Monty said. "Steve really almost died?"

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "And we were all next."

"I am seriously freaked out right now that I've been sharing a dorm with her for almost three weeks," Gabe said. "I mean, we were on her list," he said, gesturing at himself and Jim. "She could have gotten us any time. I sure as hell wouldn't have seen it coming."

"Comment sommes-nous supposés trouver le second?" Jacques asked.

"Especially if it could be anybody," Dugan agreed. "Is the other assassin a Metamorphmagus too?"

"We don't know, but it's probably safer to act like it," Peggy said. "If Hydra could find one, they could find another one, and along with this memory thing, it's a brilliant way not to get caught."

"Jim, what are you thinking?" Bucky asked. Jim had been uncharacteristically silent for some time.

"I'm not sure yet," he said thoughtfully. "Is it alright if I…" He pointed down to the other end of the ward where Yvonne was still in the chair talking to Phillips.

Peggy nodded. "Just don't say anything about knowing there's another one. She doesn't know we know that yet."

Jim nodded and moved away. His face was white as a sheet when he came back. "Jim?" Bucky asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Jim sank down onto the nearest bed and closed his eyes, swallowing hard. "It's Esther," he said quietly.

Silence greeted him.

"What?" Gabe asked at last.

"Why do you say that?" Monty wondered.

Jim shook his head and opened his eyes. "It's the necklace," he said. "Esther…she has one just like it. I remember seeing it and teasing her about it—our parents won't let her date until she's fifteen, and I was joking that she'd gotten it from some boy, but she said it was a birthday present from one of her friends." He shook his head again. "It was a couple of days before Marsh got killed." He swallowed hard, looking like he was going to be sick. "Do you think she was the one who…"

Bucky sat down next to him, sliding an arm over his shoulders. Jim's dark eyes held the same fear and guilt that were trying to gnaw a hole through Bucky's chest. "How did I miss this?" Jim whispered.

"We all missed it," Bucky said. Jim looked up at him. "We're going to get them back," he promised. "We know where they are, and we're going to get them."

"Bucky, _Zwart_ has them," Jim argued. "Zwart. You remember Zwart? Remember what he did to Steve? Esther, she…she's so…she couldn't take that, she…"

Bucky tightened his grip on Jim's arm. He'd been thinking the same thing about Becky. She was a tough kid, but she was just a kid. She was so little, and…

"Zwart needs them both alive," Peggy said, crouching down in front of Bucky and Jim and resting a hand on their knees. "He can't hurt them like he did Steve and risk losing them and jeopardizing this mission here."

That was true. "He could hurt them some," Jim pointed out quietly. That was true too.

Peggy nodded. "And he might," she admitted. "But they're alive, and we're going to get them out. They're going to be okay."

"How do we want to play this?" Dugan asked. "I'm thinking we can't just march up into Ravenclaw and grab her."

"No," Peggy agreed. "If she's anything like Yvonne, she's a hell of a fighter. We need to get her somewhere on her own first."

"What if I went up and got her, and told her something had happened to Jim?" Gabe asked. "She's acting like Esther, and Esther would care about that, so she'd have to come."

"That could work," Monty said. "Though I imagine she'll be a bit on edge with Yvonne missing."

"So, we'll be careful. And we need to incapacitate her before getting her in here," Bucky said. "If the fight goes bad, she could hurt Steve, or get Yvonne loose, and if they get out of sight and shape-shift again, we'll never find them."

They talked things over a little more, then decided to go ahead and send Gabe up to get her. He would act like he was bringing her to the infirmary, but the rest of them would be waiting in one of the empty rooms before they got there. Peggy pulled Phillips briefly aside from his interrogation and filled him in, and he gave them the affirmative to go ahead.

Like Bucky had when they apprehended Yvonne, Jim sat this one out. As much as he wanted to see this through, he didn't trust himself going into combat against someone who looked like his sister either.

Peggy had been right when she said these girls knew how to fight. While Not-Esther had followed Gabe willingly enough at first, she was clearly suspicious by the time he turned aside into the empty room. Her knife was out before she was all the way in the door, and if not for Gabe's athletic reflexes, she would have caught him in the neck. She ducked and rolled to avoid the Impediment Jinx Bucky shot at her, then sprang up slashing with her knife at Peggy with one hand and shooting spells at Monty with the other. Peggy spun around to avoid the knife, then kicked out and caught her wrist, sending her wand clattering across the floor. Not-Esther snarled and rolled away from Peggy, skidding under a desk and snatching up her wand again, flipping the desk on its side to shield her from the spell Dugan shot at her. Bucky and Gabe kept shooting spells at her, distracting her from Jacques who popped up behind her and kicked her hard in the back, sending her sprawling to the floor.

She lost the wand again, but slashed out at Jacques' ankles with her knife as Dugan yelled, "_Stupefy_!" and caught her square in the chest with a burst of red light.

"Well, that's definitely not Esther," Gabe said, stepping over to kick the knife away from her unconscious form.

"Was the other one that bad?" Dugan asked Peggy. She nodded grimly.

"Jacques, you okay?" Bucky asked. From where Bucky had been standing it hadn't looked like she'd gotten him with the knife, but he wasn't getting up from where he'd landed when he jumped away.

"Elle m'a eu dans la jambe," he winced. He lifted his hands from where they were rubbing his leg to reveal blood spreading rapidly across his pants under his left knee.

"Dugan, get him up to the infirmary now," Peggy ordered. "That's a deep cut—who knows how much poison got into it."

"Yes, Ma'am," Dugan said, scooping Jacques up into his arms and striding for the door.

"Alright, let's tie her up and get her up to Phillips before she wakes up and shifts into something else," Bucky said, nodding down at the assassin.

Bucky had to admit, the look on Yvonne's face—even though it still looked like Becky—when they brought her unconscious partner up into the infirmary was priceless.

"No, no, no, no, no," she whispered, staring in shock as they restrained the new one to a chair and set up a cage bubble around her too.

"Uh huh," Bucky replied with a smile. "You picked the wrong team to mess with."

"No, no, no, he's going to kill us!" she exclaimed.

"Schmidt?" Bucky guessed.

She nodded minutely.

"And you know what? I'd be okay with that," Bucky said. "But you give us everything you were holding back—and I mean _everything_—and maybe you can spend the rest of your life in Azkaban instead of us just handing you back over to him for a slow and painful death." Bucky had nowhere near the authority to make that kind of call, and maybe Yvonne knew that, but she nodded and started talking anyway.

Not-Esther's name was really Helena, and she was Yvonne's twin sister. Metamorphmagi were rare, but it was genetic, and the girls were identical twins. Their father had been deep in with Grindelwald and Hydra from the beginning, later switching his loyalty completely over to Hydra. When they were young, he'd seen that their abilities could prove an invaluable asset, and so he'd had them begin training. Combat, weapons, espionage…they'd learned it all, and Grindelwald, and later Schmidt, had welcomed their skill set. They'd racked up an impressive number of kills between them. As Yvonne was finishing her story, Bucky did wonder, if they were as good as all that, why she was caving so easily, until Yvonne mentioned that they were good enough, they'd never actually gotten caught before. She'd been killing people since she was fourteen years old, but she'd never been interrogated before.

She also couldn't escape by means of the suicide pill so common to Hydra agents—an occupational hazard of shape-shifting. The capsule hidden inside a tooth did not change bodies along with the rest of her, so she didn't have one. Bucky did wonder if she would use it anyway. She certainly had the cruelty and violence that seemed to be a requirement for joining Hydra, but she didn't seem to have an awful lot of conviction.

Schmidt had called the two of them in after the mission in Barcelona. By taking the stone, they'd interfered with something of Zola's that was important to Schmidt. The plan was already in motion when they took out the other factory, which had only infuriated him further. Zwart had been brought in because of this memory spell he'd developed, but the bulk of the work was on the Koenig sisters. Schmidt had wanted to instill chaos at Hogwarts, to remind them no one was safe, as well as taking out some S.S.R. members who'd been giving him trouble. The Howling Commandos were their main target, but anyone else was fair game too. Taking Becky and Esther had been Schmidt's idea—another reminder to the team of how long his reach was, as well as a more personal way to attack them.

"I don't know what was meant to happen to them if Helena and I had gotten all of you without getting caught," Yvonne said. "Keeping them alive is necessary for the spell, but he probably had it in his head to use them as some sort of backup in case we failed. Leverage, you know. Or bait."

Helena woke up before they had finished, and though she seemed equally as frightened as Yvonne once she realized that they'd failed, she seemed less inclined to talk and more inclined to curse—some of the expletives she came up with put Jacques' creative swearing to shame. In the end, Phillips decided they had as much as they needed and had the two of them sent downstairs to the dungeons. One of the perks of everyone being restricted to the common rooms was that, even though it was barely eight o'clock, there was no one around to wonder why Rebecca Barnes and Esther Morita were being arrested.

They checked on Jacques—Helena had gotten him pretty good and he couldn't move his leg or most of the left side of his body at all, but Rains was confident he'd be out in the morning with Steve. Steve was still asleep, but they circled up around Jacques' bed and started their preliminary planning. They could refine it with Steve in the morning.

Once that was done, they all headed back to their houses to get some sleep. Bucky stayed in the infirmary, in case Steve woke up. He accepted a mild sleeping potion from Rains—he'd be able to wake up if Steve needed anything, but he'd be able to actually fall asleep and not lay awake all night stewing in guilt. Not that he didn't deserve an uneasy night or ten after letting this happen to his sister, but he needed the rest so he could be on top of his game tomorrow when they went to rescue her. He had to get her home safe. He could berate himself later.

"I'm coming, Munchkin," he whispered into the dark. "You just hang on 'til I get there."

* * *

_So, we know now that Becky didn't actually try to kill Steve, but it might be something of a stretch to say things have gotten better. Still, they know more than they did a chapter ago, so that's something. _

_Rescue mission on Monday!_


	72. Family Means Nobody Gets Left Behind

_Okay, poor Becky and Esther have waited long enough. Zwart has some pissed-off Howling Commandos headed his way.  
_

* * *

Steve woke up feeling stiff and achy, but he could move again, and the more he did it, the easier it got. He could talk too, although his voice felt like he hadn't used it in about a thousand years. He was worried at first when he woke up and saw Bucky laid out in the next bed over, thinking he'd gotten hurt while they all went after the other assassin last night, but then Bucky woke up and Steve realized he'd just been camping out overnight to keep an eye on him, like he always did.

"The other one was Esther?!" Steve asked while Bucky filled him in. That, well, that made a lot of sense, actually. They were the only siblings of Howling Commandos on campus, after all, and Schmidt would know that. Who better to try to use to hurt them?

He was still kind of clumsy as he started moving, and Bucky was good enough not to say anything when he tripped a couple of times on the stairs leaving the infirmary, just throwing out an arm to catch him. By the time they made it all nine floors back down to the ground level, Steve was moving smoothly again, the last of the stiffness gone from his muscles. He showered quickly and changed into his uniform, contemplating the scar on his chest as he did so. It didn't hurt anymore, and it had faded to a soft pinkish line, barely visible against the rest of his skin. It would be gone in a day or two. Steve was glad of that. Though he certainly got hurt often enough, between magic and his own advanced healing capabilities, he didn't end up with a lot of scars. The ones he did have, he didn't mind, but he would have minded this one. It wasn't Becky—the real Becky—who'd tried to kill him, but it was her face he saw. The memory would fade in time, but not if that mark was there on his skin reminding him every day.

Although they were in a hurry to go and bring their girls home, they didn't actually leave until well into the afternoon. There was more planning to do, and gear and spells to get ready. They had to do this right.

There was transport to arrange too. Zwart wasn't at his home in Salzburg, but in a Hydra safehouse outside of Berlin. Germany was hard enough to get into these days, never mind the building itself. Yvonne and Helena had only been there to drop Esther and Becky off, so their knowledge of the place was limited, but they'd provided what they could. Yvonne had even offered up copies of her memories so they could get a visual—she was doing everything she could to make herself useful enough to earn protection from Schmidt.

Calling the building they were heading for a 'safehouse' really felt like it was understating things. Steve thought the word 'fortress' would have been more appropriate. It was a hulking gray mound of stone, barely any windows or doors, and so many magical wards around it, Steve could almost see them. The warding was identical to what Zwart had had around his house in Salzburg, there was just a hell of a lot more of it. Again, an invitation was the only way in, barring a lot of explosions and aggressive magic that would have drawn enough resistance to keep them from getting in the door.

It was a long, nerve-wracking hour of waiting before anyone came out of the building. Two guys in civilian clothes came out and headed for a car in the parking lot. None of the team could cross the magical barrier, but Monty's curse bombs could. From the tree he was sitting in just outside the barrier, he tossed one in, where it landed with a precise _clink_ on the cobblestones. The men didn't have time to do anything but look down at where it landed between their feet before it exploded into a silent puff of green smoke. The _Confundus_ Curse in place, he threw in another one, and this one hissed as it sprayed the light purple mist of belladonna extract into the air.

The confused men by the car, merely stumbling and staring dumbly at first, began to yell, ducking and hiding from whatever it was the belladonna was making them see. Peggy walked into view around the gate, calling out in German to ask the men if they needed help. She smiled when they replied, evidently having gotten the invitation she needed, and hurried into the yard. They were silenced and stunned, bound and gagged in under a minute.

"Do come in, gentlemen," Peggy said, turning to where the rest of them were waiting. They hurried over to her, and while Dugan and Gabe loaded the unconscious bodies into the car, Peggy grabbed Jim's arm. "You said you have the antidote for that stuff, yeah?" she asked. "There was still some of that mist in the air when I got here, and…"

Jim winced in sympathy. "Yeah, hang on just a second."

Steve wrapped a hand around Peggy's arm while Jim dug through his bag. "You okay?"

"Mm-hmm," she a little tightly. She was studiously not looking at anything besides Jim's bag on the ground, but she raised her hand up to grab Steve's. He wondered what she was seeing.

Jim handed her a little vial and she downed the contents quickly. "Better?" Jim asked.

"Much," she said, handing it back. "Thanks." She squeezed Steve's hand to let him know she meant it, then let go.

"This way around to the back is clear," Bucky said from the other side of the car. "Jacques has an eye on the door." The two of them had gone around to check while the others cleared up at the car. He led them around into the shadow of the building, and maybe it was just Steve's imagination, but it felt a lot colder there. They crept around to where Jacques was examining the spells surrounding a small door. Dugan and Jim moved in to help.

"So, you're sure we don't need an invite into the house too?" Gabe asked.

Peggy shook her head. "We did in Salzburg because that was just a house. There's multiple buildings on this property, so that bit of security is just expanded outward."

"And it's just standard security on these doors here," Jim said, not looking up. "A lot of it, but nothing we haven't seen before."

"And we're assuming he'll have some way to tell it's being tampered with," Steve reminded them. "Maybe we'll get in unnoticed, but it's safer to move quick and be ready to fight once we're in." Unfortunately, they weren't sure where to go once they were in. Yvonne hadn't been able to tell them that—she and Helena had handed off the girls in the parking lot. They'd debated for a while over the wisdom of splitting up once they got inside. It was dangerous territory, and there was safety in numbers. The longer they were there, though, time was going to become a factor, and speed would be an asset. They had finally decided to stay as a group until they cleared the main area, then split into two groups of four for the search—they could cover more ground that way without getting too isolated.

Dugan got the door open and after they all got into position, they burst inside. Steve was up front, shield held high, with Bucky, Peggy and Gabe projecting shield spells out to the sides. Monty was covering their six, and Jim, Jacques and Dugan were in the center, weapons ready. Six men in Hydra black were lounging in what was some sort of break room, and the team made quick work of them, surprise still on their side.

They kept going, one room at a time. The place was big—maybe the size of a warehouse—but not as big as Schmidt's castle had been, and if they could keep this pace up, they should have the main level cleared fairly quickly. Of course, with all the noise and damage they were causing, they were attracting more company, and that was slowing them down. They didn't waver, though, fighting with a ferocity Steve didn't think he'd ever seen in the team before. This fight was personal. For all of them.

Every room they came into, the battle was intense. These guys were more of the caliber they'd seen at Schmidt's castle, tougher than the average Hydra goon, and there were a lot more of them than there were in the castle. The team was taking some pretty good hits, but they all got up and kept going, Jim darting in with quick fix-it spells that would buy them a few hours when they couldn't. Dugan was howling wildly, his energy gun firing blasts that took out opponents and chunks of wall alike. Peggy and Gabe were flinging spells so fast the air around them was glowing, while Monty was tossing curse bombs and explosives with deadly precision. Jacques was flying around the room so fast Steve couldn't even see him, but he could hear him, and Jim was just a blur of motion and magic. Bucky had his wand in one hand and his gun in the other, and he hadn't missed a shot yet.

Steve flung his shield out in a wide arc, taking down four soldiers as it bounced off their heads, and then two more with quick blasts of magic from his wand. The shield came back to his hand just in time for him to smash it up into the face of an approaching soldier, but with his midsection briefly unprotected, he took a spell to the gut that sent him flying back into the wall hard enough to knock some bricks loose. He hit the floor with a groan, and Peggy was there in front of him, holding his shield up to protect them both, and yelling for Jim, who appeared so abruptly Steve could have sworn he'd popped up out of the floor.

Jim muttered three quick spells, patted Steve on the back and said, "Good to go," then disappeared again. Steve shoved himself to his feet, grabbed the shield back from Peggy, and jumped back into the fray. He threw the shield back out again in one direction, taking out a guy who was fighting with Bucky and another who was fighting with Dugan. A wave of his wand in the other direction picked up all the bricks he'd knocked loose and sent them flying back to land in a heap on top of the guy who'd thrown him into the wall in the first place.

Steve was well aware by now of the way time slowed down in combat—though it felt like he'd been fighting forever by the time things started to clear up, it had probably been only twenty minutes or so. Dugan shielded the door to the room they were in, giving them all a quick minute to catch their breath.

"Okay," Jim panted. "I'm not reading many people left on this floor. We've got some up above—don't know what they're waiting for—and several on the basement level. I thought I picked up a trace of the magic from that linking spell downstairs too, but they've shot up a bunch of wards and sealed themselves in. Those two things together probably means that downstairs is where we want to go."

"Right," Steve nodded. He looked around the room. Everyone looked tired, and they were bloody and dirty, but still on their feet. "If we can get downstairs, can we seal ourselves in to give us time to find the girls without the people upstairs joining the party?"

"Probably," Dugan allowed. "But even from here, I can tell the wards around the downstairs entrance are a doozy. They'll take a while to get through."

"Well, screw that," Bucky said. "If they locked themselves down there 'cause they know we're coming, who knows what they might do to Becky and Esther if it takes us a while to fight our way in? It's already taken too long."

"What're you thinking?" Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged and pointed at the floor. "Let's just blow a hole in the floor and go straight down."

Dugan grinned, his teeth shining brightly against the dirt covering his face. "I like your style, Sarge."

"It's a good idea," Peggy said. "But if we're trying to regain the element of surprise, an explosion might not be the best way to do that. Why don't we try Vanishing part of the floor instead?"

"Can you even do that?" Gabe asked.

"Well, maybe not one person," Peggy said. "Since it's such a big, solid thing. But there's eight of us."

"Seven," Monty said, slipping his bag off his back and digging through it. "If it's surprise we're after, why don't you lot work on the floor, and I'll send some of these back the way we came," he said, pulling out some more curse bombs. "That way it'll sound like we're still busy up here."

"Okay, but we can't let you go out there and plant those by yourself," Steve said.

"No need," Monty assured him. "They've had timers for a while now, and Howard came up with this new wandering feature. I can activate that while you're working on the floor, and then all I have to do is roll them out the door and they'll take off on their own."

"Do it," Steve said.

Monty got to work on his curses and the rest of them set to work on the floor. They all were more than capable of Vanishing things by this point, but like Peggy had said, the floor was big, thick, solid stone. It was much more massive than anything they'd tried to Vanish before, and it took a lot of work. For a couple of minutes, it seemed like nothing was happening, then one of the bricks disappeared.

"Alright!" Jim exclaimed. "Okay, everyone concentrate your magic on that spot."

Once the first brick went, the others started going faster. Soon they had a small hole, and they stopped for a minute so Jacques could stick his head through it and look around, then declare the coast was clear. They kept going, and soon the hole was big enough to give them a good view of the floor below, and wide enough to accommodate Steve's shoulders. He slipped through first, standing guard while the others came down, and then standing directly underneath the hole to help Jim, Jacques and Peggy down. Monty came through last, magically shielding the hole above them so no one could follow them down.

"Alright," Steve said quietly. "Which direction are we going?"

Jim checked, running the spell that would look for traces of the linking spell. "That way," he said, nodding out the door and to the left.

"Then?" Bucky asked.

"That's all I got," Jim said. "Look," he added at Bucky's exasperated huff. "It's a little spell, and there's a whole hell of a lot of magic happening in this building, okay? It's the best I have."

"Alright," Steve said, stepping in before Bucky said something he'd end up regretting later. Steve knew it wasn't Jim he was mad at. "Let's go that way."

They moved out into the corridor. It was narrow and poorly lit, and they stayed close together until they hit a fork. Jim couldn't tell which one would take them the direction they needed to go, so they finally had to split. Jacques, Gabe, Monty and Dugan went one way, Steve, Bucky, Peggy and Jim another.

"Is it too quiet down here?" Bucky whispered to Steve as they walked.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "I mean, they know we're here, so…"

Bucky nodded. They were waiting for them somewhere.

"Guys, I'm reading some people up this way," Jim said quietly. He'd been running the spell that checked for people every minute or so, but all the magic in the building was interfering with his readings. If he could read them for sure, they had to be close.

"Wands and guns ready," Steve whispered. It could be Becky and Esther, or it could be some more of Zwart's guys. It was starting to bother Steve that they hadn't seen Zwart yet.

A faint light shone under the door of a room up ahead. They exploded through it, weapons held high, but only silence greeted them. There were no soldiers in the room, no guards. Only a table full of radio equipment and a line of metal bars walling off one end of the room. Becky and Esther were each asleep on a cot on the other side.

"Becky!" Bucky exclaimed, rushing forward.

"Esther!" gasped Jim, running with him.

"Peggy, watch the door," Steve said, and she nodded, then he followed them.

A quick tap of Bucky's wand on the door had the lock springing open, then he and Steve were pressing inside to where Becky was lying, Jim doing the same on the other side.

"Becky?" Bucky asked nervously, dropping down to sit beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder. She was curled up on her side, hands cuffed together and tucked up under her chin. She was kind of dirty, and maybe a little paler than she usually was, but she didn't look like she was hurt. She was still asleep though, unheeding of their presence.

"The necklace," Steve said, catching the glint of the green jewel as Bucky brushed her hair back.

Bucky reached for it, then stopped. "Can I just take it off?" he asked. "Is there, like, a spell to break, or do I just…"

"Yvonne said taking it off was all you had to do to break the link," Peggy said from the door.

Bucky slid his hands under her hair, one lifting her head up while the other slipped the chain off. He tossed the necklace down to the floor with a harsh _clink_, and Steve heard the echo of Esther's necklace hitting the floor over in her cell.

"Becky?" Bucky asked again as she started to stir.

Her eyes blinked open sleepily, and one of the worried knots in Steve's stomach started to uncurl. Then she gasped and scuttled away to the head of the cot, pressing herself up against the wall.

"No, hey, Becky, it's me," Bucky said, reaching out a hand. "It's okay, it's just me."

He rested his hand on her arm, and she tensed, looking down at his hand and then back up at him. "Jay?" she breathed.

"Yeah," Bucky replied, smiling warmly. "I'm here."

"You're really here?" she whispered.

"I'm really here," he said, squeezing her arm.

She stared at him in shock for a moment, then a relieved smile broke across her face. "You're really here," she breathed happily.

She started to reach back for him, then a knot of magic twisted and clenched in the air, and she was gone.

"NO!" Bucky screamed, lunging forward to where she'd been sitting. "NO! No, no, no, no, no, no!"

Steve was staring in shock at the empty space where Becky had been. "What…" he asked numbly, unable to figure out what the rest of the question should be.

"It was a Portkey," Peggy said, and she wasn't by the door anymore, she was next to Steve, holding on to his arm.

"What?" Jim whispered, drawing Steve's eyes over to the other cell. Esther was gone too.

"It was a Portkey," Peggy said again. "I'm sure of it."

"But they weren't…" Steve protested. They hadn't been holding anything.

"The cuffs," she said. "It had to be. They were both wearing them. And Bucky and Jim were touching them but not the cuffs—that's why they didn't go anywhere."

"Where are they?" Bucky whispered brokenly. "They…" He'd been fighting so hard, and they'd found her, they'd finally found her, only for her to disappear literally through his fingers. He looked absolutely crushed, utterly defeated. Steve knew exactly how he felt. "Peggy, where are they?" he whispered. Peggy was the only one who seemed to have anything left. If they had any hope, she was it.

"They're gone," Jim rasped. "It's a freaking Portkey, they could be anywhere!"

"No, I don't think so," Peggy said.

"Why not?" Steve asked quickly, latching onto whatever hope she was offering.

"Portkeys are like apparating, they're limited by magical warding. That's why you couldn't just Portkey into a place like Hogwarts, or why we couldn't just come straight in here."

"Peggy, we Portkey into Hogwarts all the time," Jim argued.

"Yeah, but we belong there," she pointed out. "Some random stranger couldn't do it. Anyway, listen, remember at Zwart's house, when we got out, we made a Portkey?"

Steve only vaguely remembered that, but Jim and Bucky nodded.

"We had to go outside the magical bounds of the house so we could use it," she explained. "That's why we had to walk so far. These are the same wards here, but like you said, a lot more of them. So many more of them that even someone who belongs here couldn't just transport out. No one can magically transport out of here without getting outside the wards first." She looked them all in the eye. "They're still in the building."

A crackle of static and a raspy chuckle came through the radio over by the door. "Very good, Miss Carter," it said, sending a shiver down Steve's spine. He knew that voice.

"Zwart," Steve growled, spinning and glaring at the radio.

The voice chuckled again. "Hello, Captain Rogers. You sound well. You must be doing better than last time I saw you, if you were able to fight your way in here."

"What have you done with my sister?!" Bucky demanded, jumping to his feet.

"As the woman said, I've simply moved her," Zwart replied.

"Where?" snarled Jim.

"Further in. Harder to get to," Zwart said. "You see, I always knew the Koenig twins would fail. Favorites of Schmidt's, I know, and effective in their own way, certainly, but I do have a good deal more insight than most into how hard you are to take down. No, I knew they would fail, and I knew you would come. And I knew…" Here Steve heard a smile in his voice, the kind of smile he always had before doing something that was really going to hurt. "I knew there was no chance of you cooperating if you thought they might be dead. So I let you see them alive."

"Cooperating?" Steve asked.

"You don't think these two little girls were who we were really after, do you?" Zwart asked with a disdainful snort. "They're just bait. Very effective bait, too. For the moment, they're still alive, and whether or not they stay that way depends entirely on you. Come and find them, and then we'll see how tough you really are."

The line went dead.

"Let's go," Bucky said, moving for the door.

"Wait," Steve said, catching his arm. It burned him to have gotten so close and have them snatched away like that, and everything inside him was screaming to go tear the place apart until they found them, but Zwart was probably counting on that. "He wants us to come running out there half-cocked. We have to think about this."

"Steve, he—"

"I know!" Steve snapped. "And he's going to die for it. But he's not taking us with him." Bucky glared back at him, and Steve could feel him trembling with rage in his grip, but Bucky drew in a deep breath, nodding sharply.

"Right. You're right. I'm sorry. What are we going to do?"

"He wants us to come to him, right?" Steve started. "That means he's probably got something set up, some kind of trap. All those people Jim sensed earlier, before we came down here? They're probably with him."

"We need a distraction," Peggy said. "Call the rest of the team—don't bring them to us, but have them start raising some hell to draw some of the soldiers away."

"Okay, good. Do that," Steve said, thinking as Peggy passed the instructions on to the rest of the group. "The four of us need to stick together, but stagger it out. I'm guessing when we find wherever he has them, it'll be some kind of… 'drop your wand or I kill them' kind of situation." He felt a little nauseous just thinking that. "So, when we find them, one, maybe two of us go in, and then two stay back until eyes are off them. He knows there's four of us, but if we don't all go in at once, he'll think we've split up to look."

Everyone looked at each other, then nodded grimly. They set out carefully into the corridor again, eyes and ears wide open for any flicker of shadow or movement of air. Steve was trying very hard not to imagine what kind of things Zwart could do to Becky and Esther. Surely, no matter what he _intended_ to do them, surely he wasn't hurting them right now. He had an ambush to set up. Time for torturing your prisoners later. Right?

"Stop!" Jim hissed. "We've got people. Gotta be in that next room down there," he said, nodding at the next door in the hallway. "I'm counting five."

"Okay, they'll know we're coming," Steve said. "Jim and I will go in. Bucky, Peggy, you stay here."

"No, I—" Bucky protested.

"Stay. Here," Steve said firmly. Bucky opened his mouth to argue again and Steve grabbed his arm. "Listen," he said, lowering his voice. "If something goes wrong in there, only one of us will be down. She's gonna need you." Bucky looked like he wanted to argue again, but he nodded slowly. "Hang back, get a feel for the room. Then come in and help us send them to hell."

Steve and Jim moved in. The door wasn't locked, or even closed all the way. They eased it open, rounding a stack of boxes, and came face to face with four guards in black uniforms and masks, and Esther, sitting in the corner with her wrists cuffed to a chair. No sign of Zwart or Becky.

"Jim!" Esther whimpered, tears running down her face.

"How sweet," one of the guards said. "Big brother to the rescue."

"Let her go, or I'll tear you apart," Jim snarled, stepping forward and raising his wand.

"How about I make you a counter-offer?" the guard said. He nodded, and the guard closest to Esther stepped back, closing the distance between them, and placed his gun to the side of her head. "Drop your weapons, or he'll splatter her brains all over the wall."

"Jim?" she whispered, looking terrified, and Steve fingered the edge of his shield, itching to hurl it straight into the guard's skull. All he had to do was pull the trigger though, and if he was fast enough, the shield wouldn't get there in time. Steve nodded to Jim, and they dropped their wands. Jim tossed his gun to the floor with a loud clatter, glaring daggers at the guard with the gun to his sister's head, and Steve threw the shield down with more force than necessary, making sure Bucky and Peggy could hear it outside.

"Good," the guard said. He raised his own gun and gestured to the corner opposite Esther where another set of metal bars walled off a section of the room. "Over there."

They complied, moving slowly enough to get a good look around the room, eyeing the walls and making sure there wasn't anyone else hiding in the shadows. Jim nodded at Esther, shooting her a quick wink. It would be okay.

The guard over by Esther lowered his gun once Steve and Jim were in, though he didn't move away from her. Steve caught a flicker of movement over by the boxes where they'd come in and stopped walking, putting on his most obstinate face. "Alright, fine, you caught us," he snapped. "You can let her go now."

"I didn't say you could stop moving," the guard said. "And I don't think we're—"

Whatever he didn't think they were going to do was lost in an explosion of light as Bucky and Peggy burst into the room. Peggy shot a blast of magic at the guard who'd been talking, knocking him off his feet and throwing him across the floor, and Bucky's gun caught the guard standing by Esther in the throat and he dropped like a rock.

Peggy scooped up the wands from the floor and tossed them over, and Bucky hurled Steve's shield toward him. Steve felt its comforting weight smack into his hand, and then the fight started.

It was chaos for a little while. The guards who hadn't been hit were surprised, but quick to react, and the one Peggy had thrown across the room was getting to his feet. Jim pointed his wand at the chair his sister was in and yanked, pulling it across the room and over to the side of the boxes by the door—still in view, but out of the line of fire. They punched and fired and kicked and slashed, and Steve thought he heard someone scream, and then it was over. Four Hydra guards lay dead on the floor, Esther was curled up and shaking in the chair and crying, and they were all still alive.

Jim hurried over to his sister, pausing just long enough by the body of the guard who'd been talking to hiss, "Told you I'd tear you apart," and kick at what was left of him, which was, actually, in more than one piece. He dropped to his knees by Esther's chair, loosing her cuffs with a tap of his wand. She melted off the chair into his arms, crying and burying her head in his chest. Jim was crying too, murmuring softly in Japanese and stroking her hair.

Steve looked around. Bucky was bleeding from somewhere up under his hair, but he was getting to his feet. Peggy was sitting up, but Steve realized with a jolt that she was the one he'd heard scream earlier—almost all of her right leg was covered in blood.

"Peggy!" he exclaimed, rushing over. She was pressing shaking hands and a knot of cloth to her knee.

"I'm alright," she hissed. "Is Esther okay?"

"She's fine, Peggy," Steve assured her. "But you're not alright. What happened?"

"Gun," she breathed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall. "Can't move it." She opened her eyes and managed a pained smiled at the look on Steve's face. "It's a lot of blood, but it didn't hit any important arteries or I'd've bled to death already."

"That's not funny."

"I know. But I'll make it," she assured him. "Although, if Jim could get over here sooner rather than later, that would be good."

Bucky had come over, and Steve nodded at him to take over putting pressure on Peggy's wound, then pushed himself to his feet to get Jim. "Hey, Jim?" he asked, brushing his shoulder. He hated to interrupt, but they needed him. Jim looked up. "Peggy got hit pretty bad. Can you take a look?" He nodded at Esther and opened his arms. "I can take her, if you want."

Jim nodded, blinked the water out of his eyes, and stood up. Esther whimpered as he started to move her and he kissed the side of her face. "Hush now, my little _Hotaru_," he whispered. "I have to help Peggy, but Steve has you now. It's alright." He kissed her again, whispered something in Japanese that elicited a tiny watery giggle, and placed a hand on her head. "I'll be right back," he promised.

Esther wrapped her arms around Steve's neck and he hugged her tightly. "Are you okay?" Steve asked, rubbing her back. She nodded uncertainly into his shoulder. "They didn't hurt you?" She shook her head. "I'm glad," he said. He knew there was still a lot of psychological damage she would have to unpack, but at least there was that. Steve felt a little bit of the worried pressure in his chest ease. "We were worried about you."

She lifted her head, tears swimming in her dark eyes, but she smiled just a little bit. "Thanks for coming to find me," she whispered.

Steve hugged her tighter. "Anytime," he whispered back, all the volume he could get over the sudden lump of emotion in his throat.

She nuzzled her face into his chest again. "Did you find Becky?" she asked softly.

"Not yet," Steve replied. "But we will. Do you know where she is?"

She shook her head. "He took her away," she said. "After the magic pulled us out of the cage, he grabbed her and took her away."

"Do you know who he was?" Steve asked, though he had a sinking suspicion.

"I don't know his name," Esther said. "But he's the guy who put the spell on the necklaces. He was always there at night when they took them off and we woke up, and he was always making sure they were working right when they put them back on in the morning." She sniffed. "He was really scary. He really wants to hurt you—all of you." She looked up at him again sadly. "Be careful when you go find Becky."

"I will," Steve assured her. "And we will find her, and then we're all gonna go home. I promise."

"Okay," Jim said, standing back up, frowning at the blood on his hands before wiping it off on his pants. "I've got it stabilized so she's not losing any more blood, but she's not walking anywhere on that. I don't know if it was just a lucky shot or what, but that bullet absolutely shattered her knee. I'm talking bone fragments are all that's left."

"Will she be alright?" Steve asked worriedly.

"Yeah," Jim said. "Rains can fix that easy, but it'll have to wait until we get back. I can't do a break that complex."

"Okay," Steve said thoughtfully. If Jim said she'd be alright, then she'd be alright. They couldn't leave her here on her own, though. And Esther, well, they couldn't exactly take Esther with them into combat. They could leave her here with Peggy, but if someone came in here, Esther wouldn't be any good in a fight, and Peggy could get even more hurt trying to protect them both. Steve exhaled unhappily. "Alright, Jim, you stay here with Peggy and your sister." It was a bad idea, but it was the only one they had.

Jim looked like he was about to argue, but Steve could see the same thing that had occurred to him occurring to Jim. He nodded, stepping forward to take Esther. "I'll keep them safe, Captain," he promised. "You go find Sarge's sister and bring her home."

Steve nodded, knelt down and kissed Peggy on the forehead, then hopped back to his feet. "Buck, you ready?"

"Hell, yes," Bucky agreed, pushing up from where he was crouching next to Peggy. He picked up his rifle from where it had fallen on the floor and slung it back over his shoulder.

"Esther said Zwart took Becky after he pulled them down here," Steve said, checking the corridor before they moved back out.

"Smart," Bucky said, and Steve caught the furious undertone in his otherwise flat voice. "Wear us down by making us fight more, try to split us up."

Steve nodded his agreement. "I don't know how many guys he's got with him."

"Doesn't matter," Bucky shrugged. "They're all dead meat. And Zwart is mine. I mean it, Stevie," he said when Steve started to open his mouth. "I should've killed him in Salzburg for what he did to you. But after this?" He shook his head. "He's _mine_."

Steve didn't know how this fight was going to go, but he wasn't going to argue.

They checked every room they passed, finding nothing each time, until they finally came to the end of the corridor. The room at the end had no door, it just opened up into a large, dark space, shelves of equipment blocking their view into the rest of the room. Steve held up a hand and Bucky stopped, silent. Steve listened carefully. He could hear people breathing, the slight footfall of a shoe on stone. "This is it," he whispered.

He knew there was no point in telling Bucky to hang back this time, and Steve sure as hell wasn't going to send him in there on his own, so they went in together. Moving softly, they crouched down and peered through the contents of the shelf in front of them. The room beyond was wide but fairly shallow, lit with pale fluorescent bulbs hanging from the high ceiling. Steve could just make out a large door at the far end, and there were several cars parked between them and it. This was the garage. He nodded at the door, and Bucky nodded back. They'd have to make sure no one made it to the door during the fight and got away.

In the center of the room, next to a table full of tools and a large pillar, was Becky, cuffed to a chair just as Esther had been. A guard with a large gun was pacing the floor near her, and three more were moving around the room. Steve couldn't see Zwart, but he had to be there somewhere. He decided not to risk running a spell to count people—it was a little spell, but these guys were on such high alert, they would pick it up, and no one seemed to have noticed their arrival yet. They couldn't get to Becky without revealing themselves, but maybe they could take out a guard or two before being seen.

Steve motioned to Bucky, pointing first to him, then the guard closest to Becky. Bucky nodded, then moved to the far end of the shelf. Steve stayed where he was, eyeing the room and wishing he had a couple of Monty's curse bombs right about now. He looked down at Bucky to see if he was in position. Bucky nodded back. Steve held up three fingers to give a count.

Three.

Two.

One.

The guard by Becky dropped to the floor, struck by a silent spell and clawing desperately at his throat. The other guards turned at the sound of his body hitting the floor, then spun around again as Steve's shield struck another one of them and a car with a loud _clang_. Steve and Bucky ran out into the garage, yelling as they rounded the sides of the shelf, drawing eyes away from Becky and onto them. They entered a furious duel with the two remaining guards, bullets and spells flying, and the best they could do was try to keep it on the far side of the room from Becky—Steve tried what Jim had done with Esther, but the chair Becky was in must have been bolted to the floor, because it didn't move.

The fight was over almost as quickly as it began, but as they whirled back to where Becky was, a sick knot twisted in Steve's stomach and made him wish he'd tried to count after all. Another guard was standing next to Becky's chair, and Steve didn't think he'd ever seen anyone that big in his life. The guy had to be half-giant or something. One meaty hand rested on Becky's trembling shoulders, the other sat casually on the gun still in his belt.

For a long, tense moment, no one said anything, the three of them simply sizing one another up. Steve edged his shield down his arm, getting it in position to throw. The gun wasn't pointed at Becky yet—Steve had time to throw the shield, draw his attention, and the shield could get him from one side and Bucky could get him from the other while he was distracted, and if nothing else, it would move him away from Becky, even if it took a few more hits to bring something that big down.

Shield in position, Steve pulled back his arm to throw, but the guard clocked the movement and yanked his gun out of his holster. Instead of aiming at Steve, though, he swung his arm up and around, far faster than anyone that size should have been able to move, and fired at Bucky, who fell against a Jeep and then to the ground, his hand clutching at his midsection.

"JAY!" Becky screamed.

"I thought I told you to shut up," the guard snarled, backhanding her across the face so hard he cut her cheek.

The world went red for a minute, and Steve had crossed the space between him and the guard before he was conscious of doing so. He slashed with his wand, a spell he'd learned from Peggy, and the guard screamed as the hand he'd hit Becky with fell away from his arm in a bloody mess. "Don't you touch her again," Steve snarled, and then they were going at it, spells and fists flying.

They both got in some pretty good hits, even with the guard being down a hand, then the guard struck out with a length of pipe at Steve's feet and he jumped and rolled out of the way, coming up a few feet away.

"I think that's quite enough of that," came a familiar voice from behind him.

Steve turned, shield and wand still raised. Zwart was standing back by the table. He'd uncuffed Becky from the chair and was holding her up off the ground against him, one hand around her throat. "Shield and wand down, Captain, or I snap her neck like a twig."

Without a second thought, Steve let go of the shield and the wand. He'd seen what Zwart could do, and he had no doubt that he'd carry out his threat.

"Good boy," Zwart said. Steve felt the big guy move up behind him. Zwart smiled. "I should have tried this last time."

Steve swallowed down a knot of anger, his eyes scanning the room for options. Automatically, they went to the Jeep behind Zwart where Bucky was lying on the ground. Steve had seen the shot go high, missing all the vital organs in Bucky's abdomen (hopefully) and catching him below the ribs. Not good, but not fatal, provided he could resolve this quickly. Bucky moved, his hand searching for something on the ground, and Steve let out a little breath of relief. He darted his eyes back to Zwart before he noticed where he was looking.

"Congratulations," Steve said. "You got me. Let her go and I'll do whatever you want." He had no intention of keeping that promise, but he couldn't do anything to get them out of this with Becky in the middle of everything.

"No, Steve…" Becky protested.

"Quiet, girl," Zwart snapped, shaking her roughly.

Steve swallowed down another angry knot, his eyes catching Bucky moving again. He was still lying on his back, but he had his rifle up now, holding it steady against his chest. He rolled his eyes to meet Steve's, and Steve read the question there, giving him a nearly imperceptible nod in return to let him know he understood. He had a clear shot at Zwart, but with Becky's feet up off the ground and Zwart's long coat hiding them, Bucky couldn't tell where she was. He didn't want to hit her.

Steve looked back at Zwart. "I mean it. You let her go and you can have me." He dropped his gaze down from Zwart's, meeting Becky's eyes. "Becky," he said. "Becky, look at me. Look at me." She locked her eyes on his and Steve stared back intently, knowing Bucky could see where his eyes were. "It's gonna be okay, alright? I promise. Everything's going to be okay. You just keep looking at me, alright? You keep your eyes on me."

"Okay," Becky whispered, and she was shaking and trying not to cry, but she kept her eyes on Steve.

Steve looked back up at Zwart. "I know I'm the one you want. That's what all this was about to start with, wasn't it? So, let her go and I'm all yours."

Zwart chuckled. "It's terribly gallant of you, Captain, but you do realize I'm holding all the cards, don't you? I already have you, and I still have the girl, and as long as I continue to have the girl, I have your cooperation. I'm certainly not ready to let her go just yet."

Steve risked another quick look at Bucky. Steve didn't know why he didn't roll over for an easier shot, but the gun was in position, and if anyone could make that shot upside down, it was Bucky. Bucky blinked at him. He was ready.

"Last chance, Zwart," Steve said. He looked down to where Becky was still staring nervously at him. "Becky, close your eyes," he said gently. Confused and frightened, she nodded minutely and obeyed. He met Zwart's eyes coldly. Those cruel green eyes that he still saw sometimes in his nightmares. "Let. Her. Go."

"You think having her close her eyes will spare her from what's coming next?" Zwart scoffed. "You know full well what I can do to you, and she's going to watch every—"

The sharp crack of a bullet rang out through the air, and the back of Zwart's head exploded out of the front of his left eye socket. He dropped like a rock, but Steve was already moving, his foot coming down hard on the edge of his shield and bouncing it up off the floor in front of him and into his hand, where he whirled it around with enough force to crush the face of the stunned behemoth behind him and send reverberations racing up Steve's arm.

The giant fell and did not rise, and Steve spun around again to where Becky was laying on the floor pinned underneath Zwart's body, eyes still closed and shaking in terror. He snapped the shield onto his back and knelt to scoop her up, and she yelled and struck out at him, but he tucked her in close against his chest. "Ssh, it's okay, it's Steve," he soothed, and she quit fighting. "It's Steve, it's okay. You're safe now, I've got you. I've got you." She sobbed and buried her face in his chest, and he kissed the top of her head and hugged her closer, trying to shield as much of her as he could with his arms. "It's all gonna be okay now," he told her.

He stepped away from Zwart, pulling his hand away from the back of Becky's head and clicking his radio. "Jim, we need you," he said. "Very end of the corridor. No hostiles left, but Bucky's been shot. Get here quick." He let go of the radio and went back to stroking Becky's hair, murmuring reassurances as he walked over to Bucky.

He rounded the Jeep and dropped down to his knees. Bucky had let go of the rifle and was clutching a bloody hand just below his ribcage. His eyes were shut, but he opened them when Steve knelt down. "She okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Steve assured him. "She's shook up real bad, but she's alright." He looked down at Bucky's chest. There was less blood than he'd been expecting, considering how long it had been since he got shot. That was probably good. "You?"

Bucky nodded. "I'll live. Shot went high. Didn't come out the back." That was why he hadn't rolled over yet—he was using gravity to try to keep more blood inside and keep the bullet from dislodging and making things worse.

Steve nodded. "Jim's on the way." He smiled. "That was a hell of a shot, man."

Bucky smiled back. " 'm team sniper for a reason." He reached up his free hand to touch Becky's back. "Can I see her?"

Steve nodded. "Becky?" he said, nudging her away from where she had burrowed into his chest. "Bucky's here; you wanna see him?" She looked up and nodded, and Steve turned her in his lap so she could see her brother. "Careful," he said. "He's been hurt. Stay up by his head, alright?"

He let go of her and she slid down to the floor, laying her head on Bucky's chest and wrapping her arms around him as best she could. "Jay?" she whispered. Steve leaned forward to take over putting pressure on the bullet hole, and Bucky grunted, then raised his arms up to hug her.

"I'm right here, Munchkin. I'm right here."

She started crying again, and Bucky just hugged her tighter. "Please, don't die, Jay," she pleaded.

"I've survived worse than this," he told her, turning her head so she was looking at him and not Steve's blood-covered hands on his stomach. "Really." He smiled at her. "I didn't come all this way to clock out right after I found you. I'll be okay."

Jim burst loudly into the room, breathing heavily, and Steve took one hand off of Bucky to wave over the hood of the Jeep. "We're over here!" he called.

Jim rounded the front of the Jeep and Steve could see why he was breathing so hard—he'd run all the way down here carrying his sister. "Here, you sit with Steve, alright?" he told her, sliding her down into Steve's lap again. "Becky?" Jim asked, kneeling down beside Bucky. He placed a hand carefully on her hair. "Hey, I'm glad we found you, kiddo; you okay?" She nodded a little bit. "Okay," he said, smiling warmly. "Alright, now, I know you just got him back, and I'm sorry, but I need you to move for me, sweetie, okay? I need you to move out of the way so I can fix him up. Here, come sit with Steve and Esther, alright?" She let him tug her back a little, and then Steve looped an arm around her waist and pulled her up into his lap too. "Okay," Jim said, smiling again. "Don't you worry. He's gonna be just fine."

Jim turned his attention fully to Bucky now, waving his wand over the bullet hole and muttering, and Steve pulled the girls in a little closer, resting his head on top of Becky's. "Oh, yeah," Jim said. "Yeah, you're gonna be fine, Sarge. This is an easy one."

Bucky shot a quick smile over in Becky's direction. "See? Told ya."

"I gotta get the bullet out first, though," Jim said, pulling a long pair of tweezers out of his bag. "Sorry, man, this is gonna hurt."

Bucky nodded. "Just do it."

Steve flinched in sympathy as the thin metal arms slid into Bucky's chest cavity, then he pulled his hands up over the girls' ears, cradling the two of them against his chest as Bucky screamed in pain. Esther turned away, burying her face in Steve's shoulder, and Becky whimpered softly. Jim's hands stayed steady, then started slowly pulling back. "Okay. Okay, okay, okay, I got it. I got it. Here we go." The bloody tweezers glistened in the overhead light, then the bullet dropped to the floor with a wet _clink_. Bucky was gasping in pain, every hitching breath only making it hurt more. Jim picked up his wand again, waving it over the wound. "Here we go," he said, mostly to himself. "Here we go. Okay." Bucky relaxed back into the floor with a long, low exhale, and Steve let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"Thanks," Bucky rasped.

"You're welcome," Jim said. "But I'm not quite done yet. You lost a lot of blood, and the bullet left a tiny nick in your lung, and there's more blood in there than there should be."

"Yeah, I felt that," Bucky said.

"I fixed the hole, but we need to clear that out," Jim said, handing him a small vial from his bag. "Drink this, and it's gonna make you start coughing and getting it out. That's probably gonna hurt too," he said apologetically. Bucky took the vial and drank it, then Jim rolled him over on his side—thankfully, with his back to the girls. He started coughing, bringing up the blood that had gotten into his lung, and the wet, splattering sound couldn't help but make Steve think of a few months back and Bucky slowly dying of tuberculosis on the floor in front of him.

Jim rolled Bucky back over and handed him another potion. "Okay, this one will help to start building up all that blood you lost. Don't get up for a few more minutes—you're gonna be kind of light-headed."

Bucky nodded. "Thanks," he croaked.

Jim nodded, then turned to Steve. "The other guys got the rest of this level cleared out. Gabe's back with Peggy, and the other three headed up to seal off the top level so no one can come down until we get out of here. We've got a little time to catch our breath."

"Thank you," Steve said.

Jim nodded. "They're also laying explosives all over the place—there's not gonna be anything but a crater left of this place after we leave."

"Good," Bucky grunted. Steve nodded in fierce agreement.

Jim took Esther back, and Becky slid back down onto the floor. Bucky was sitting up slowly and carefully, and he reached forward and wrapped his arms around Becky. She kept one hand fisted in the front of Steve's uniform, pulling him with her, and Steve threw his arms around her and Bucky both, sandwiching her between them. Steve finally felt like he could breathe again, after so long of trying to keep calm and be strong, for Bucky, for Jim, for all of them. All the doubt, all the guilt, all the fear of losing her, all the joy of finding her, all the fear for Bucky and the relief that he was okay, he couldn't hold it in any longer and he let it all out, hot, salty tears spilling down his face.

The sniffles and stifled sobs he heard and the trembling muscles he felt under his hands told him he wasn't the only one in this hug who was crying, but that was okay. They'd all been through a lot, but they all came out of it together. They were going to be okay.

Their family was back together.

* * *

_The girls are a little shaky on their feet yet, but they're safe. Tune in Monday for some nice recovery time and Becky getting taken good care of by her big brothers._

_"Hotaru," which Jim calls Esther after they find her, is a Japanese name that means "firefly"._


	73. I Will Be Here, Don't You Cry

_Alright, as promised, Steve and Bucky and Little Sister Becky fluffiness. Everything's going to be okay.  
_

* * *

Bucky sank down onto one of the stools in the infirmary with a pained groan. Everything hurt. He was having trouble remembering if he'd ever been in a tougher fight. The quick fix spells Jim had been casting during the battle had been great for keeping them alive and keeping them going, but they'd worn off now, and every piece of Bucky's anatomy was protesting its existence. Ironically, the only thing that _didn't_ hurt was where he'd gotten shot in the stomach. Jim had had time to properly fix that.

He felt a little hand on his knee and he opened his eyes to see Willow standing there, a large cup of something sweet-smelling in her hands. "Master Bucky must drink this," she said. "Sir is in much pain, but this will help."

"Thanks, Willow," he said, taking the cup. He nodded at the curtain a couple of beds over. "Are they almost done?" Nurse Rains was on the other side, examining Becky.

Willow nodded. "Yes, sir. Nearly finished, I thinks."

"Is everything alright?" he asked nervously.

Willow nodded again, taking the cup back. "From what Willow hears, sir, yes, sir." She laid a comforting hand on Bucky's arm. "Sir will know soon."

She moved further down the ward, various cups of potions and remedies on her tray destined for the rest of the team. They were all pulling through with no serious injuries—even Peggy's knee had been a quick repair job. They were all just sore and exhausted, and Rains had declared they'd all be spending the night up here.

The curtain slid back and Bucky pushed himself to his feet, a little less sore than when he'd sat down. Becky was in bed, smoothing down her covers, and Rains looked up and saw him coming and smiled, so it was probably good news.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, sitting down next to Becky and taking her hand.

"She's going to be just fine," Rains said. "No permanent damage done from the magic, though she may be a little unsteady on her feet for a few days. A trifle undernourished, but with lots of rest, lots of food, and lots of looking after from her big brother, she's going to be alright."

"Good," Bucky said, grateful for the news. He squeezed Becky's hand and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead.

"I'm going to check in with some of the other lads, but I'll be back," Rains said, standing up and patting Becky's feet underneath the blanket. "I've given her a potion to help her sleep," she told Bucky. "So, don't be surprised if she starts nodding off."

"How you doing, Munchkin?" he asked gently as Rains walked away. Physically, she was fine, but she'd been held captive for nearly three weeks, even if she _was_ unconscious for most of it. Those kinds of wounds were a lot harder to heal.

"I don't know," Becky said softly. She nuzzled her head against his side. "Kind of scared, and kind of…maybe sort of mad, but mostly I'm just…I'm tired."

Bucky rubbed a hand up and down her arm. "Okay." He kissed the side of her head again. "You can go ahead and go to sleep."

She blinked up at him curiously. "You don't wanna know what happened?"

"Of course, I do," he told her. "Whatever you need to talk about, I want to know about all of it. You can tell me anything. But you don't have to do it right now." He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "We can talk whenever you feel like it. We've got all the time in the world, you and me, because I'm not going anywhere."

She smiled just a little bit at that. "Thanks," she whispered.

"Hey, Becky," Steve said, sitting down next to the bed. When Rains had pulled the curtain for the examination, he'd gone down the ward to check in with the rest of the team. "Is everything okay?"

"Uh huh," she said. "How's everybody else? Is Esther okay?"

Steve nodded. "She is. She's asleep over there."

"What about Peggy?"

"She's fine. She's already walking around. Or, she would be," Steve corrected with a smile. "If Nurse Rains didn't keep making her get back in bed."

"That's good," Becky said softly. Bucky knew she felt really bad about what had happened to Peggy, as if it had been her fault somehow. She kept her arm looped around Bucky's waist, but she reached out her other hand to Steve, and he took it. "Thanks for rescuing me," she said quietly, looking up at Bucky and then over at Steve.

Bucky hugged her tighter and Steve squeezed her hand. "We're always gonna come for you, Munchkin," Bucky said firmly.

"Always," Steve insisted.

"I know," she whispered. She gave them a watery smile. "Thanks."

Bucky leaned down and kissed the top of her head, and she nuzzled her head into his side and shut her eyes. He reached up and brushed his fingers softly through her hair as she fell asleep.

"Is she really okay?" Steve asked after a few minutes.

"She's not hurt," Bucky said. "Rains said all she needs is sleep and food." He swallowed down a knot in his throat. "She's pretty shook up, though."

Steve nodded. "Yeah." They could both imagine how she felt, but neither of them had to. "Are you okay?" Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged. "Bullet hole doesn't hurt anymore. Still pretty sore everywhere else, but Willow had a thing for that. Did you drink yours?" He knew Steve had gotten thrown pretty hard into that wall earlier—Jim's quick-fix spell had actually been holding back some internal bleeding that Rains had had to clear up the rest of the way.

"I did," Steve said. He looked Bucky in the eye. "You know that's not really what I meant."

Bucky sighed. "I know." He didn't say anything for a minute. "This should never have happened to her," he said at last, unable to keep the bite out of his voice.

Steve flinched as though Bucky had slapped him, but he nodded. "I know," he said quietly.

"No, Stevie, I…" Bucky shook his head. "I wasn't blaming you."

"You should," Steve said.

"Schmidt warned us all," Bucky said. "We all made the decision to go ahead." He sighed. "None of us knew this would happen. I'm not mad at anybody on the team or anything, I'm just…I'm just mad. And I don't have anything to direct it at. But I'm not…" He hadn't been trying to direct any of it at Steve, and he hadn't meant for it to land there. "Please don't think I'm mad at you."

"I just can't help feeling like I should've done something different," Steve protested.

"I keep thinking the same thing," Bucky said. "I've only been over it, like, a million times. But, Stevie, not backing down from Schmidt was the right call. It…It _sucks_," he growled. "But we did the right thing."

"It doesn't feel like the right thing," Steve said, nodding down at Becky. His hand was still wrapped around hers.

"No, it doesn't," Bucky agreed. "But we gotta…" He smiled. "We gotta get each other through this."

Steve huffed a semi-amused laugh. "Seems like all we do anymore."

"We're getting pretty good at it," Bucky said, and Steve smiled a little more. "Look at me and say it, Steve," he told him. "I'm not mad at you."

Steve met his gaze, then nodded. "You're not mad at me."

"Good."

"You know I'm not mad at you either, right?" Steve said.

Bucky smiled softly. "I know."

Steve sighed and shifted his chair over a little so his arm wasn't stretched out awkwardly, then leaned his head back against the wall. "I'm taking us off the mission roster for the rest of the term, though," he said. There was only about a week and a half left, but something could still come up. He nodded down at Becky again. "She's gonna need us around for a while. And I think we all need some time to find our feet again, kind of…kind of shore things up some before we go back out."

Bucky nodded, relieved. He wasn't ready to run off on other missions and leave Becky alone, and Steve was right, the team needed some time to recover from this. It was different than after the mine, but it was still a sucker-punch they hadn't been ready for. They all needed some time, and a quiet end to the term and then a long break at home would do them all good.

They didn't talk much after that, just sat there holding on to Becky, lost in their own thoughts. Even though Bucky had just given this whole big speech about how he didn't blame Steve for what happened, he _did_ let a lot of that blame rest on himself. It was hypocritical, Bucky knew, and maybe even illogical. If it was anyone's fault (besides Schmidt's), then, yeah, you could argue that as the team leader's, it _was_ Steve's. But Steve hadn't known any of this would happen, had never dreamed Becky would pay the price for something they did, and it seemed stupid to blame him for something he couldn't control. He truly didn't hold it against Steve at all, hadn't even thought of doing it. By that logic, Bucky shouldn't be blaming himself either, but it was so much easier to absolve someone else than it was himself. But his sister was alive, and maybe one day, after she was _really_ okay…maybe one day he would.

Bucky woke up with a crick in his neck from leaning against the wall all night. Becky was still snuggled against his waist, though she had rolled over, pulling Steve's hand with her and making him lean and stretch across the mattress, where he was still sprawled out asleep. Bucky smiled warmly and settled back, trying not to move so he didn't wake either of them.

He looked up and blinked in surprise to see both of his parents sitting beside the bed. "Ma?" he asked. "Pop?"

"Hello, sweetheart," his mother said, reaching over to pat his arm.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. Well, okay, stupid question, they were here because of Becky, but…

"Professor Phillips called us yesterday to let us know what happened," his pop said. "By the time they'd arranged an emergency transport for us and the Moritas, you were all asleep. We didn't want to wake you."

Bucky looked down guiltily. "I was gonna tell you," he said. "It was just all so fast, and as soon as we knew where she was, I had to—"

"It's alright, sweetheart," his mother assured him. "We understand." She looked like she'd been crying, but she smiled at him. "We're just glad you were able to bring her back safely. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Ma," he said. "Me and Steve both." Sure, he'd gotten shot—again—but he was fine now, so there wasn't any need to bring it up.

"Good," she said.

"You can go on back to sleep if you want," his pop said. "From what we heard, it sounded like a rough night."

Bucky shook his head and sat up a little straighter, and they talked softly for a while until Becky and Steve woke up. His parents wanted to know everything that had happened, and Bucky told them everything he could. They deserved to know, and if they were going to be upset with him for letting this happen to her in the first place, well, he deserved that. They weren't upset, though, just grateful that they were all back safe.

"That was an amazing thing you did," his pop told him, squeezing his arm warmly. "We're proud of you, son."

Bucky wasn't sure what to say to that, blinking back grateful tears, but then Becky and Steve woke up and saved him from having to say anything.

Steve and Bucky both got up so his ma and pop could sit with Becky, and Nurse Rains came over to check on them and see about getting them all some breakfast. She prodded gently at the side of Bucky's head where he'd taken a pretty good hit when they were saving Esther and gave him another potion to take for it—she'd fixed up as much as she could last night, but the downside of Jim's quick-fix spells was that some of them took longer to wear off than others, and they actually masked some injuries when she checked for them the night before.

Bucky didn't have any intention of leaving his sister alone for a very long time, but his mother tactfully suggested that now that she and their father were here to look after her, perhaps Steve and Bucky would like to leave and take a shower. His pop snorted at that, and even Becky smiled just a tiny little bit, and Bucky rolled his eyes and kissed his sister on the cheek and tramped downstairs to take a shower. He _had_ smelled better, he supposed. And his muscles still felt sort of achy, and the hot water felt _amazing_.

He spent the rest of the day up in the infirmary. The rest of the team was patched up and cleared to go, and they all came and checked in with Becky and Esther before they left. Peggy sat and stayed a while, and Bucky appreciated the way she made sure to let his sister know that even though her leg had gotten hurt coming after her, she wasn't holding it against her.

Becky didn't talk much for the rest of the day. She mostly slept, waking up to eat, and she'd sit up for a while and listen to everyone else talk, clinging on to whoever happened to be sitting next to her. She did tell them a little bit about what it had been like—as soon as the necklace went on, she would drift away, and she was kind of asleep, but she could feel Yvonne sifting through the inside of her head. She couldn't do anything but float there, and she always felt groggy and confused and a little nauseous when they took the necklace off and she woke up. They would wake her and Esther up at night, when Yvonne and Helena were sleeping and didn't need the memories. That was when they got to eat. Then Zwart would come back in the morning and make sure all the magic was working the way it should, occasionally recasting or recalibrating one of the spells, then the necklace would go back on and she'd float away again. Bucky hugged her a little tighter as she told the story. It sounded uncomfortably similar to his time with Zola, and the fact that someone had put his little sister through that made him wish he hadn't killed Zwart quite so quickly.

He was sitting with her later that evening. His parents had gone to talk to Phillips, and Steve was doing some debriefing with Peggy about the Koenig twins. Becky was leaning into his side, fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt.

"You were the one who shot that guy, weren't you?" she said rather abruptly, breaking the silence.

"Um," Bucky began. He knew she knew what he did when he went on missions, but it still didn't feel good admitting that to her. "Yeah," he said.

Becky didn't raise her head from off his stomach, but she angled it up to look at him. "Thanks."

He smiled a little and stroked her cheek. "You're welcome. I'm sorry you had to see something like that, though."

She shook her head. "I know you've had to kill some people before, Jay. But you did it to protect people—it doesn't make me think you're a bad person or anything. And I know that even though it's Hydra and all, you don't like doing it." She'd asked him once why he always spent time down by the punching bags after missions, and he'd tried to explain it as best he could. She stopped playing with his button and looked up at him seriously. "Thanks for doing it for me."

Bucky looped both his arms around her and hugged her tight, kissing her warmly on the forehead. "I'm always gonna protect you, Munchkin," he whispered fiercely in her ear. "Anything I have to do to keep you safe, I'm happy to do it." He closed his eyes and leaned into her hair. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, Jay," she whispered. He felt a wet patch on his side where she started to cry into his shirt, and he just pulled her closer and held on. She cried for a little while, then went still, and Bucky started to wonder if she'd fallen asleep, but then she turned her head and her fingers resumed their picking at his shirt button. "Sorry I keep crying all over you," she said softly.

He smiled sadly and sat up a little, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. "You see me judging? You know how much I cried when I got away from Hydra?"

She nuzzled her head against him, but didn't look up. "Can I ask you something?" she asked after a minute.

"Anything," he told her.

She was quiet for a minute, and he gave her time to figure out what she was trying to say. He remembered how hard it was to put words together when it didn't feel like your head was on straight. "When you…" she began at last. "I mean, after you…When Steve brought you back, how did you…How did you figure out how to be okay again?"

Tears prickled sharply in the corners of Bucky's eyes, and he closed them and sighed deeply. "I wasn't for a while," he admitted.

She nodded minutely. "I remember," she said softly.

Bucky swallowed down a lump in his throat. "I was scared and jumpy and my head never felt like it was on straight. But you know what helped me?"

She shook her head.

"Steve," he said simply. "You. Ma. I could tell everyone was worried, but nobody got mad that I wasn't getting better fast enough. Nobody made me feel embarrassed for being scared, or like a baby for needing someone to take care of me. You would read me stories, even though I'm usually the one who reads to you, and Ma would sit with me on the couch and let me fall asleep with my head in her lap like I was a little kid again, and when I had bad dreams Steve would wake up and talk to me until they went away, and sometimes he'd just hold on to me until I felt safe again. The people who loved me were what helped me be okay again. Nobody treated me like I was broken, and nobody acted like the things I needed were some kind of extra burden. No matter how bad Hydra was…" His voice wavered and he took a second to draw in a deep breath. "No matter how bad they were, they were never gonna be bad enough to outweigh how much my family loved me. _That's_ what helped me figure out how to be okay again. And that's what's gonna help you be okay again too."

Becky sniffled and raised a hand to wipe her nose.

"It might take a little while," Bucky said. "And, oh, sweet girl, you don't know how much I wish I could just make all of it okay for you right now. But however long it takes, it's okay. Whatever you need for however long you need it. Me, Steve, Ma and Pop—we're here for every little step of the way." He picked up her hand from where it was still toying with his button and squeezed it tight. "I'm here for you, Munchkin. Forever and for always."

She rolled her head to look up at him, steel blue eyes so like his own glistening with moisture just like his were. She didn't seem to know what to say, but she was smiling, a real smile, and Bucky leaned down and kissed her forehead gently and just rested his head on top of hers for a minute.

Becky yawned, and Bucky smiled and shifted a little bit, adjusting her so she would be more comfortable. "Go on to sleep, Munchkin. I gotcha."

"Can I tell you one more thing first?" she asked.

"Sure."

She tapped her finger against one of the buttons on his shirt. "I'm not mad at you, you know," she said. "I know you think that I am, or maybe that I should be, but you're not saying anything 'cause you think you deserve it." She smiled at the look on his face. "I know stuff," she said. "And I'm smart. I'm in Ravenclaw, remember? I can figure things out."

Bucky laughed a little at that.

"Anyway, I…you told me what happened in the mine, and what Schmidt said you should do. And you didn't listen to him, so you think it's your fault I got hurt. But it's not."

"Becky—"

"Jay, I know how much you love me. I know you wouldn't ever do _anything_ if you thought it was gonna hurt me. What happened was…It was just an accident. You didn't mean for it to happen. Like that time you bumped into me and knocked me down the stairs and I broke my wrist."

"This is a little bigger than falling down the stairs," he pointed out.

"Yeah," she agreed. "But it wasn't any more on purpose." She yawned again. "I don't think I need to say it, but if you need to hear it, then I forgive you."

Bucky blinked back the sudden moisture springing to his eyes, something tight unclenching in his chest. "Becky…" He didn't know what to say.

"I love you, Jay," she said softly. "And I'm really not mad." She stretched the arm that was resting on his stomach around him and hugged him. "I may not be alright yet, but you and me are okay," she finished sleepily.

Bucky rested a hand gently on her hair, brushing his fingers through it softly. "Thank you," he whispered shakily, all he could really say. What had he done to deserve a sister so amazing?

She nodded against his side, letting her eyes sink shut. "Tell Steve I'm not mad at him either," she said, and if Bucky hadn't been sitting so close, he wouldn't have been able to catch all the words that were swallowed into a yawn. "I love you both, but you guys can be kind of dumb about stuff like this."

* * *

The end of term seemed to come very quickly despite how uneventful it was. Becky spent a couple of days up in the infirmary, and Steve and Bucky were up there almost the whole time, though the Barneses did insist that the two of them go down each night and sleep in their dorm in a real bed. They stayed on after Becky got out too, just to make sure she was alright. There wasn't much of the term left, and Phillips had offered to let them take her home, but Becky had wanted to try to stay for a couple of days first to try to get her feet back under her.

She reminded Steve an awful lot of Bucky after he'd brought him home from Azzano. She wasn't sick, or hurt like he had been, but there was something in her manner, in that lost look in her eyes, that sent Steve's mind reeling back to that winter two years ago. He'd been able to help Bucky back then, but he wasn't sure how to help Becky now. Though Bucky and Becky both had made it clear they didn't hold what happened to her against him, Steve wasn't so quick to forgive himself. He knew it was the right thing, standing up to Schmidt. He knew that no one could have foreseen this turn of events. He just couldn't stop turning it over and over in his mind and wondering what he should have done differently to keep it from happening. Because he was the Captain. Planning for contingencies to keep his people safe was his job. And he'd failed.

The afternoon before she was supposed to go home, Steve was down in the garage working on his bike and trying to figure out what he should say to her before she left. He hadn't come up with much so far.

"I thought I might find you in here," came a voice from the door, and Steve turned around to see Mr. Barnes. He walked over to where Steve was working, leaning down to take a look. "She's looking good. Bucky tells me you take her out for rides off campus."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Barnes nodded. "Beautiful country for it." He moved away and stepped back to lean against a workbench, folding his arms and seemingly content to watch Steve work. Steve couldn't help but feel like he should say something.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said at last.

"For what?"

"For what happened to Becky," he said. "I…I should've…"

"Steve," he said, stopping him from going any further. "Have I ever told you about the car accident I was in?"

Steve frowned, confused. "No, sir."

"I was driving to the train station to pick up Mrs. Barnes. She'd gone upstate to see her mother. There was some construction blocking the road, so I had to take a detour. I could've gone a couple of different ways, but I picked the one that would give me the most direct route. Went on a few more blocks, came to an intersection. A four way stop, no lights, just signs. I waited until it was my turn, then I pulled out into the intersection. Halfway through, a milk truck ran the sign—he hadn't planned on stopping, I guess, and it was too late to stop by the time he saw me. He slammed into the car and sent me spinning around, across the intersection and into the wall of a drugstore."

Steve still wasn't sure why he was telling him this story, but he couldn't help listening in fascination. He'd never heard it before. When had this happened?

"I was pretty banged up," Mr. Barnes continued. "But my door opened alright, and I got out. The car was almost in two pieces, but that wasn't what worried me. You know what did?"

Steve shook his head.

"Bucky was in the backseat."

Steve's mouth dropped open in shock.

"He was two years old," Mr. Barnes added, his voice a little tight. "I looked back there and he was on the floor, covered in dirt and blood and not moving, and I picked him up and apparated the hell out of there, not caring a fig for who might have seen me. Straight to St. Clement's, and a good thing too—the Healers there said he wouldn't've made it if I'd waited for an ambulance." He stopped and looked down at his shoes, and the smile on his face when he pulled his head back up was one Steve was all too familiar with—the one that meant everything was most certainly _not_ fine, but maybe if you smiled you could convince yourself it would be.

"He was fine," Mr. Barnes continued. "Bad as it was, it was nothing magic couldn't fix up quick and easy, and we went home." He sighed. "I couldn't look at him for weeks. Every time I did, all I could see was his tiny little broken body in the back seat and I would think how close I had come to losing him. For weeks, all I could think was that I should have just gone the other way—if I'd only turned the other way, none of it would have happened."

Steve thought he could tell where the story was going now.

"It took me a while to make my peace with it," he said. "But I finally accepted that I had done the best I could." He smiled sadly and straightened up, reaching over to put a hand on Steve's shoulder. "You did the best you could too, Steve. Maybe you could have done something different, and maybe it would have been better, but maybe it would have been worse. You'll never know. And you can dwell in the what if's forever, but all you end up getting out of that is an ulcer." He smiled just a little. "Trust me on that one."

Steve tried to smile back, but couldn't quite manage it.

"What happened to Rebecca happened because an evil man did an evil thing," Mr. Barnes said. "But she's alive and safe now because a good man did an incredible thing." Steve looked up to see Mr. Barnes' eyes watering. Steve's own eyes weren't exactly dry either, and Mr. Barnes pulled him forward into a fierce hug. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you for bringing my baby girl home."

"And if you look at her," Mr. Barnes continued after a minute. "If you look at her and all you can see is that scared, hurt little girl in the hands of a dark wizard, then close your eyes. Listen to the way she smiles when she says your name. Feel the way her hand rests in yours when you're holding it. And then look at her again and see if, instead of seeing the girl who was taken, you see the girl who was saved."

Steve nodded, something inside his chest unlocking and letting him breathe. "Yes, sir," he nodded. He finally managed to get that smile working. "Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome, son," Mr. Barnes said, clapping him on the back and letting him go. He smiled warmly and nodded down at the bike. "Now. You want some help with that cracked plug?"

The last week of school passed quietly. Steve spent a lot of time studying or sitting with Peggy, and checking the morning owls daily for news from home about Becky. She was reportedly bored and a little bit cranky without him and Bucky home, but she was getting the rest she needed, and Steve was glad. He couldn't imagine going through something like that and then having to go back to school like everything was fine.

End of term exams came and went, and then it was time to head home. Becky didn't always sit with them on the train, but it was weird not having her there at all. She was excited to have him and Bucky home, smiling more than Steve remembered from the infirmary, and that was good to see. They still hadn't seen her laugh, though.

Now that they were home, she followed them around the house like a shadow, clinging on to whichever one of them was nearest. Bucky had taken to just scooping her up and tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when he got up and moved. She didn't seem to mind.

Steve knew she was having nightmares. Like with Bucky, it had taken a little while for the trauma to manifest as bad dreams, but they were here now. He never heard her crying at night, but sometimes he would wake up in the morning to find her in Bucky's bed, rolled up in the quilt from her bed and secure under his arm, both of them sleeping soundly. Bucky said he didn't think she cried—like Steve, he'd been listening. She just woke up quietly, wrapped herself up in her blanket and came down the hall. They both tried to see if she wanted to talk about the dreams, but she had trouble articulating them.

One night, Steve had stayed up later than usual. He'd gotten to a good part in his book, so he stayed in the living room with one of the lamps on to read. Caught up in the story, he wasn't sure how long he'd been reading, but he looked up at the sound of soft footsteps.

"Hey, Becky," he said, seeing her standing in the doorway in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers.

"Hi," she said softly.

"Did you have another bad dream?" he asked. Maybe she'd been on the way down to their room and gotten distracted by the light.

She shook her head. "I wasn't asleep. I…" She sighed. "I can't sleep," she said quietly.

Steve nodded sympathetically. Sometimes what your brain couldn't shut down was just as bad as the nightmares. "You want to come sit over here with me for a while?" he offered, patting the couch cushion next to him.

She didn't say anything, but shuffled over, climbing up on the couch and leaning on him, snuggling underneath his arm.

"Why do you and Jay keep asking me what I dream about?" she asked once she was settled.

"Well," Steve said. "Me and him, we both know what it's like to have some pretty bad dreams," he told her. "And it, well, it doesn't feel so good to talk about them." She shook her head in agreement. "But they kind of…They kind of lose their power if you do. It's not fun to do, but once you're done, it's like you've pulled it into the real world, and it's not as strong here."

She considered this. "Maybe," she allowed. "But I…I don't know how to say it all."

Steve thought about that for a minute. "What if you tried writing it down?" he suggested. She rolled her head up to look at him. "You don't have to be able to explain anything that way, but you're still getting it down and out of your head. Might be worth a shot."

"I could try that," she said thoughtfully.

They sat quietly for a few minutes before she spoke again. "I do remember one thing," she said softly. "You…When you got caught, and were all sick and stuff when you came home, that was Zwart too, wasn't it?"

Steve nodded.

"Did he…There was a song he would whistle. While he was getting the necklaces ready to put back on. It was…I don't know what song it was, but he would whistle it really clearly, and too slow to feel right, and it just felt…It's the scariest song I ever heard." She looked up at him sadly. "Did he do that with you?"

"Yeah," Steve breathed.

"You're an admirer of the arts, Captain," Zwart had said once, staring pensively into the glowing coals nestled in the brazier in front of him. "Music as well? Or just the visual arts?"

Steve had been teetering on the edge of consciousness, soaking wet after having a bucket of water thrown in his face and shivering in the cold stone room. He hadn't responded.

Zwart had started to whistle as he lifted a poker from the brazier, studying the glowing tip. "Chopin's Piano Sonata Number 2 in B Flat Minor," he'd explained after whistling a few bars. "The Funeral March. One of my favorites." Steve had been hearing that song since he got here. He didn't think he'd ever _stop_ hearing it.

Zwart had resumed his whistling, strong and clear and just a beat too slow, adding a sinister note to an already ominous song. "One of the Polish Romanticists," Zwart had said. "Not one of our Aryan composers, and a Muggle, no less, but the heart loves what it loves, hm?" He'd kept whistling, but Steve had stopped listening, the red hot tip of the poker rolling down the side of his neck whiting his world out into agony and then merciful unawareness.

Steve swallowed hard and tugged Becky in closer to his side. "I know exactly the song you're talking about."

She sniffled. "I can't stop hearing it," she whispered. "It's always there when I go to sleep. That's why I can't sleep, I can't…" She swallowed down a sob. "I can't listen to it anymore!"

"Aw, Becky," he said sadly, leaning down and resting his head on the top of hers.

She rolled her head up to look at him and he sat back up, looking down into those wounded steel blue eyes. "Jay said," she began. "When you were helping him after Hydra took him, he said when he was scared, you would just hold on to him until he wasn't anymore." She swallowed down a knot in her throat. "Could you hold on to me for a while?" she asked in a shaky whisper.

Steve scooped her up into his lap, wrapping his arms around her as she curled up into a little ball and cradling her head against his chest. "I've got you now," he whispered, kissing the top of her head. She felt so small and fragile, and he blinked back the moisture pooling in his eyes. "I've got you."

They sat there for a long time. Becky didn't say anything, and neither did Steve—he just held on. He rocked her a little and hummed softly—the song his ma used to sing to him, and the song he used to sing to Becky during the air raids. Eventually, he could feel the tension start to drain out of her, and she nuzzled her head into his chest with a sleepy little sigh. He kept holding on, stroking his fingers through her hair, and when he looked down later, she was asleep, her head still over his heart and her fingers still clutching the front of his pajama shirt.

He smiled and stood up slowly, adjusting his grip on her to keep her balanced. He walked back down the hall, easing open the door to her room. Carefully, he pulled her blankets back and lowered her down onto the bed. "Ssh," he soothed, when she let out a tiny whimper when he let go. Down at the foot of the bed was Oliver, a large blue bear that was more patches than anything else now, and Steve pulled him over and placed him in her empty hands. Becky immediately pulled the bear in against her chest, snuggling contentedly into the threadbare patch on his head.

Steve smiled softly and pulled the blanket back up, tucking in girl and bear securely. He moved the lamp off of her bedside table, setting it on the floor behind it and turning it on. The table blocked most of the light, leaving a soft, warm glow that enveloped the room. Just enough light so that if she woke up, she would see the big soft chair in the corner with the Ravenclaw scarf flung over the top, the dollhouse in the other corner, the books stacked on every available surface, and the colorful rug on the floor—the things that she would recognize, that would tell her she was somewhere safe.

"Goodnight, Becky," he whispered, leaning down and resting a hand on her hair. "I love you, sweet little girl," he said, kissing her forehead gently. "Everything's going to be okay."

The next morning, he woke up a little bit before breakfast, so he returned to the living room and the book he'd left on the couch. He'd only made it through a page or two when Becky came shuffling in from her room, where she must have slept well enough to stay for the night.

"Morning," he greeted. "How you doing?"

"Okay," she said, wiping the last of the sleep from her eyes as she came towards the couch. She pushed Steve's arms out of her way and climbed up into his lap, shifting dramatically until she was comfortable and resting her head on his chest.

"Comfy?" Steve asked with a smile.

"Mm-hmm," she said. She dug around in the pocket of her bathrobe and pulled out a small notebook and a pencil. "You can keep on with your reading," she said. "I just wanted to listen."

"Listen to what?" he wondered.

"Your heart," she replied. "It kind of drowns out, you know…other stuff. It's a good sound."

"Okay," Steve said softly, emotion swelling up in his chest. He looped one arm around her, kissed the top of her head, and propped his book up on the arm of the couch. She curled up a little bit to balance her notebook on her knees and started writing in it, stopping and pausing every now and then to chew on the end of her pencil thoughtfully. They sat like that until Mrs. Barnes called them in for breakfast.

"Hey, I've got an idea," Bucky said as they were cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

"What's that?" Steve asked.

"It's been a while since we all did a story together," he said. He bumped Becky with his elbow. "Whatcha think, Munchkin? Wanna give it a try?"

She didn't answer for a minute, thoughtfully drying the plate in her hands. Steve and Bucky had been brainstorming the other night trying to come up with something that might cheer her up. She'd always enjoyed it when they read through and acted out a story together, and Bucky was right, it _had_ been a while.

"Okay," she said. "That sounds nice. I just, I guess…I mean, if you're sure you want to."

"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't want to," he told her. "Why do you think I wouldn't want to?"

She shrugged. "No reason, you're just all grown up now and everything. You don't think it's a little kid thing to do?"

"I do not," he declared. "Besides, I'm seventeen, I'm not a senior citizen or anything."

Becky smiled, and Steve nudged her arm. "We can make him play all the old people."

Becky smiled wider and Bucky whipped him with a dishtowel. "If I'm old, so are you."

Steve dodged out of the way of the towel, darting into the living room. Becky was still smiling.

They read 'Treasure Island', digging up some old broken broom handles to use as swords. Becky just wanted to be the narrator—she usually claimed one of the main characters, but if she wasn't up for that much enthusiasm yet, well, getting back into normal life sometimes required smaller steps. Steve and Bucky divided up all the characters among themselves and launched into the story with gusto and exaggerated, truly awful pirate voices.

"You guys are terrible," Becky said, but it was making her smile, so they kept going.

There were a couple of broomstick sword fights, and they danced around the living room slashing at each other until Steve accidentally knocked over a lamp. Bucky was able to magically repair it, and they went a little more carefully after that.

At one point, due to a casting oversight, Bucky ended up in a brief sword fight against himself. Steve offered to take one of the characters, but Bucky waved him off. "No, no. I've got it."

He did take Steve's broom sword, and watching him do battle with himself was quite the spectacle. Steve leaned back against the couch to watch, enjoying himself. Bucky jumped and slashed around ridiculously for a while, eventually knocking himself over the back of Mr. Barnes' arm chair to defeat himself.

At this last, ludicrous action, Becky giggled, and Steve's head snapped around to look at her and Bucky popped up from behind the chair. They stared at her for a long second. That was the first time she'd laughed since they'd brought her home. Not wanting to draw attention to it and make her uncomfortable, they quickly resumed the story, but Steve couldn't stop himself from smiling, something warm and happy uncurling in his chest. He knew she would be okay, but seeing her come back, little bit by little bit, he really believed it now.

They spent the next couple of days working through the story. When they weren't doing that, they sat around and read or listened to the radio or talked. Becky was still pretty clingy—she usually liked to be touching one of them, if not flat-out wrapped around them in some capacity. She wrote a lot in her little notebook, working out her nightmares, and sometimes a troubled look would cross her face and she would jump up into the lap of whichever of them was closest and snuggle her head against their heart and close her eyes and just listen.

She _was_ getting better, though, her natural cheery disposition slowly starting to reassert itself. She smiled more, and though she still didn't laugh easily, she did that more too, and she talked a little more freely. Becky was finding her way home.

* * *

Bucky woke up to a rush of cold air. Becky was standing next to his bed, shrugging off the blanket she'd walked down the hall in and lifting up the one on his bed to climb under it. "Hey, Munchkin," he mumbled sleepily. "Bad dream?"

"Yeah," she whispered, sitting down on the mattress and swinging her feet up.

"Get in here, then," he said, lifting up an arm for her to snuggle underneath. She laid down and he tugged the blanket back up over her. He was lying on his stomach, but she poked him in the ribs until he rolled over on his side. "Really bad one, huh?" he asked after she scooted and shifted until she had her head pressed up against his chest. A little while back, she'd started doing this thing where she would climb up into either his or Steve's lap—whichever one of them was closer to her—and just close her eyes and listen to their heartbeat for a while. Steve explained it to him later, telling Bucky what Becky had told him about the good sound drowning out Zwart's whistling. It hurt Bucky that that scared her so much, but he was glad it was something he could help with so easily.

"Yeah," she said again.

"I'm sorry," he said. He cinched his arm tighter around her and kissed the top of her head. "Go on back to sleep," he told her. "You're safe now. I gotcha." She hummed a little bit and nuzzled her head against him, breathing slow and even, and he patted her arm and shut his eyes again.

She was up before he was the next morning, though she'd left her blanket on the floor by his bed again. He picked it up and folded it, taking it back down to her room and listening to her talking with their ma in the kitchen. Her nightmares were starting to come a little farther apart. She still didn't like to talk about them, but it looked like writing them down in her little book was helping her feel better about them.

He looked at her contemplatively over breakfast as she spread grape jelly on her toast. She was very particular about her jelly—always had been. It had to be just the right thickness all the way across, and it had to come up to the edge of the bread without dripping over. He'd made her breakfast in bed once when she was sick, and she hadn't eaten the toast because he'd done the jelly wrong.

They'd been home for two weeks now—she'd been home for three—and Bucky was happy to see that she really was getting better. She smiled easily and laughed more now, and every day she was talking more, getting back to the chatterbox she usually was. There were still the nightmares, and she was still clingier than normal, but on the whole, she was getting back to normal, and Bucky was glad. It hurt his heart in ways he couldn't really put into words to see his little sister lost and hurting like she had been.

Now that she seemed like she was settling more, Bucky was thinking about the next step. Becky had been home for three weeks, and while she was doing much better around the house, she hadn't gone outside once yet since she got home. Bucky had brought it up last week and she'd gotten really upset, so he quickly backed down. He understood why she was afraid, of course, but he thought getting back out there would be good for her. It had really helped him, just moving and getting exercise and seeing sunlight, but it had also been good to see good, safe, normal things and people that didn't have anything to do with Hydra. He didn't want to push her too hard into something she wasn't ready for, but it might be time to try just a little nudge.

"So, I was thinking," Bucky said as they cleared up the dishes.

"On school break?" Steve asked in mock surprise. Becky giggled and Bucky threw an eggshell at him.

"Yes," he replied. He looked at Becky. "I know you weren't up for it earlier, but how would you feel about going outside today? Just for, like, a little walk or something?"

Becky's smile immediately vanished, and Bucky reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder.

"I know it's kind of a scary thought," he said. "And if you don't want to, I promise I won't make you." She seemed to relax a little at that. "But can I just say why I think we should try?"

"Alright," she said uncertainly.

Steve tactfully started making a lot of noise dumping the dishes into the sink, and Bucky looped his arm over Becky's shoulders and pulled her aside. "I spent a lot of time inside, after Steve brought me home, remember?"

She nodded.

"There was just something safe about being in the house. Outside, well, who knew what could happen?"

"Then why'd you sneak out?" she asked.

Bucky smiled at her suspicious tone, even as he blushed internally at the memory of why he'd done it. "Well, that's a long and messed up story for another time, and my head was in a weird place. But after that, you and Steve started taking me and going out for walks, remember?"

"Yeah."

"And that helped me. A lot more than I thought it would. It showed me that even though Hydra had tried to beat me down, I could get back up. I maybe couldn't go very fast or walk very far," he amended, and that got a little bit of a smile out of her. "But I was going, and the more I did, the easier it got. And it did me a lot of good to get out and see that the world wasn't all bad."

"I know it's not all bad," she protested.

"I know," he said. "So did I. But there's something different knowing it and seeing it. I went out and saw our neighborhood, the same place I've been living all my life, and it felt good to see it again. To see stuff that Hydra hadn't touched. It helped me feel a lot better. And I know you and me, we're different people, but we're also kind of the same, and I think it could help you too."

Becky only looked partially convinced.

"If you're not ready, then we'll do it some other day," he told her. "And if you think you might be ready, it's not like I'm gonna just kick you out the door or anything. I'll go with you. Steve too. Two big, tough guys like us around, nobody's gonna mess with you."

She smiled at that. "Alright," she said softly.

"You sure?" he asked. It was the answer he wanted, but he didn't want her to feel like he was pushing her.

"Uh huh," she said. "Just, you know, let's maybe not go too far?"

"Okay," he agreed, smiling proudly.

They finished the dishes and got dressed before heading outside. Bucky knew it would be good for Becky to get out, but he was glad for the chance too—aside from running a couple of errands for his ma, he'd been staying inside with Becky and was starting to feel a little bit of cabin fever. Going down the stairs was a little tricky with Becky wrapped around his torso, but she slid down onto her own two feet when they hit the ground. She wrapped one of her arms around one of Bucky's, reaching out with the other hand to cling to Steve, and they set off. They didn't really have any particular destination in mind, but Bucky thought they might try going to the park.

"Okay," he told her. "I know it sounds kind of silly, but while we're walking, think about what you can see and hear and smell and try to find as many good things as you can."

She looked up at him skeptically. "That does sound kind of silly."

He smiled back. "Just try it?"

She sighed dramatically. "Alright." They walked on for a minute. "Well," she said, in a voice that said she was clearly humoring him. "I can smell the bread from the bakery. That smells nice. And it's cold, but I guess the sunshine feels good." Bucky hadn't actually meant that she needed to list everything out loud, but if that was how she wanted to do it, okay. Steve caught his eye over the top of Becky's head and smiled at her dramatically resigned tone.

She kept listing things as they walked, sounding like she was starting to put a little more thought into it, and not just doing it to make him happy. She didn't let go of either him or Steve, though her grip loosened into something more relaxed. They walked around one of the trails in the park and sat on a bench for a little while watching people skating on the pond. A vendor with a cart came by, and Becky shifted closer into Bucky's side a little nervously when Steve let go of her hand and got up, though she perked up considerably when he came back from the vendor with hot roasted peanuts for the three of them.

They went home and had lunch, then collected and folded up the laundry and relaxed for a little while before it was time to make dinner. "Hey, Jay?" Becky said.

"Yeah?" he asked, turning around. He was reading a book, and she had propped herself against his back to knit. Steve was lying on the floor drawing something.

She blushed a little bit, but she smiled. "Thanks for making me go outside today. You were right, it was good to see just…good stuff."

He smiled back and ruffled her hair. "I'm glad. See? Your big brother knows a thing or two."

She rolled her eyes, still smiling. "You think you're so smart."

"I _am_ so smart," he replied. She shoved him and grinned and returned to her knitting.

Things improved rapidly over the next several days, as though getting out into the world had been the last missing piece of the puzzle. She was still a little clingy, especially when she was sleepy, but on the whole, her confidence seemed to be restored, and Bucky was glad. He was proud of her too, knowing what she was fighting against. It took more than Hydra to keep a Barnes down.

* * *

_See? A nice soft chapter without even any sinister cliffhangers or anything. _

_Hope you enjoyed._


	74. An Eye Toward The Future

_This one was a little chapter, and it continued in the nice, fluffy theme we had going, so I thought I'd tack it on and give you two chapters for the weekend. Enjoy!  
_

* * *

Like during the summer, Bucky got to see Vicki about once a week—although while Becky was still having a rough time of things, he didn't go out to meet her anywhere. She still came over, though, and had dinner with him and his family, which got less weird as time went on. Becky mostly behaved when she was there, saving her teasing for after Vicki went home.

It was kind of weird—he wasn't seeing her every day (or nearly every day) like he had when they were at school, but it felt like they were connecting more now. It was a different level of connection, and it was…comfortable. Sure, it would have been great to see her every day, but this was…this was nice.

Even though Vicki was out of school now and Bucky was getting closer to it, they weren't really looking toward the future beyond seeing where this new level of relationship was going. Steve, though…Steve was doing some serious thinking about the future.

"Whatcha looking at, Steve?" Bucky asked, coming into their room after his shower. It was Christmas Eve and everyone was heading to bed, getting ready for the festivities tomorrow.

"Huh?" Steve said, looking up. He was in his pajamas sitting cross-legged on his bed, deeply absorbed in the contents of the shoebox on his lap.

"What's in the box?" Bucky asked, nodding at it.

"Oh." Steve looked back down at it. "This is Ma's stuff," he said.

Bucky nodded. Even though Steve was fine now, missing his ma never really went away. Bucky guessed it stung a little more sharply around the holidays. "Sorry," he apologized. "I'll just…" He pointed towards his book on the nightstand, not wanting to disturb Steve's introspection.

"Hmm? Oh, no, don't worry about it," Steve said, pulling the rest of the way back into the moment. "I, uh, I actually kind of wanted to talk to you about something."

"Okay." Bucky sat down on his own bed and pulled his feet up off the floor. "Shoot."

"Um," Steve started, clearly unsure of where to begin. He looked back down at the box. "Ma didn't have a lot of jewelry," he said at last. "What she did have, your ma, she saved it for me when we were…packing up my house and stuff."

Bucky nodded. Things like Mrs. Rogers' clothes had been given away, but his ma had saved smaller, more important things like jewelry and photographs for Steve.

"I look at it sometimes and remember the stuff she used to wear," Steve went on. "She wore this one a lot," he said, lifting out a thin silver chain with a delicately carved pendant shaped like a tree on the end. "Anytime she would talk about my dad, she would tell me about this one. It used to be _his_ ma's. It's supposed to be Crann Bethadh—like the tree of life in old Celtic stories. Ma said the design was supposed to be protection from things like fairies and spirits that came into our realm through an oak tree like this one. She said Pop never knew if it worked or if it was just a story, but that he used to joke that his ma never got kidnapped by fairies, so it was probably good for something," Steve said with a soft smile.

"Or her ring," Steve went on, picking up a delicate gold circlet. "She never took it off, even with as long as Pop had been gone."

Bucky remembered that one, seeing it on Mrs. Rogers' hand all the time. He wondered where Steve was going, talking about his ma's jewelry, but he was obviously headed somewhere, so Bucky would listen until he got there.

"She only ever wore this one for something special," Steve continued, holding up a silver ring with two small diamonds and three tiny blue stones sparkling on top. "This was the ring Pop asked her to marry him with, and she didn't like to wear it when she was working and stuff because she didn't want anything to happen to it."

Steve bit his lip, studying the ring contemplatively. "I was thinking…" he said softly. "Not yet, but maybe…maybe after we get finished with school, I was thinking…I was thinking I might give it to Peggy," he finished in a rush, as if he'd wanted to get the words out before he stopped himself.

Bucky didn't say anything for a minute, making sure he'd heard Steve correctly. "You're going to ask Peggy to marry you?"

Steve shrugged, aiming for casual and failing. "I mean, not right now, or anything, but…" He shrugged again. "Do you think, I mean, am I just…Is this a dumb idea? It's a dumb idea, isn't it?"

"I think it's a great idea," Bucky replied.

"You do?"

Bucky smiled warmly. "I really do."

"You don't think it's too, too soon, or we're too young or anything?"

Bucky shook his head. "Stevie, you guys have been head over heels for each other for years. At the risk of sounding completely sappy, I don't know that I could think of two people more perfect for each other."

"That _does_ sound kind of sappy," Steve said, but he was grinning broadly, his cheeks going red.

Bucky crossed over to Steve's bed and sat down beside him. "I always figured you guys would end up there one day," he said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"It's such a…such a _huge_ thing, though," Steve said.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "So, alright, walk me through it. What's holding you back?"

Steve shrugged again. "It's just so…so _big_. Like…that's the whole rest of my life."

"And does that scare you?" Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head. "No."

"And what makes you think it's a good idea?"

Steve looked down at the ring again. "I still don't really know what I want to do after school. There are so many different things, and…But any time I think about the future, wherever I see myself going, she…well, she's always there too."

Bucky smiled warmly. "Sounds like there's your answer."

"You really think it's a good idea?"

"I really do."

"Do you, do you think I'm ready for it?" Steve asked nervously.

"I do," Bucky said again. He bumped Steve with his shoulder. "My little Stevie's all grown up."

"Shut up," Steve complained, blushing deeper than he already was.

Bucky laughed. "I mean it, though. You've come a long way from the skinny little punk who couldn't even put three words together when she was around. You guys have been through a lot together, and you come out of everything stronger. I've seen how happy she makes you, and I've seen how happy you make her. You just…" He wasn't sure exactly what the words were he wanted. "You're like a puzzle that's only got two pieces. You fit."

Steve was still blushing, but he was smiling happily. "Thanks," he said softly. He held the ring up again, catching the soft light of the lamp in the stones. "Do you think…" he started quietly. "Do you think Ma would mind?"

"No. If she was here, I think she would tell you to give it to Peggy herself."

Steve huffed a slightly watery laugh. "I wish she could have met Peggy."

Bucky slid an arm over his shoulders. "Yeah. She would have liked her."

Steve leaned into the hug. "Thanks," he said after a few minutes. "I've been thinking about this for a while, you know? And I didn't want to be doing all this thinking for something crazy."

"That's what I'm here for, Stevie," Bucky told him. "I'm a regular fountain of wisdom."

Steve snorted and shoved him with his shoulder.

"Seriously, though," Bucky told him. Their upcoming graduation was a big fork in the road, but this would be a whole new kind of chapter in Steve's life too. And in Bucky's. It would change things for both of them. But that was okay. "I'm glad I could help. I may not always have the answers, but I'm always gonna be here for you to ask." No matter how their lives changed, that was always going to be true.

Steve smiled softly. "I know."

He slung his arm over Steve's shoulders again. "Merry Christmas, Stevie."

"Merry Christmas, Buck."

* * *

Peggy leaned back against her headboard, playing with her necklace and watching the light dance across the little silver tree-shaped charm. Steve had given it to her for Christmas when they'd come back to school. It was lovely, but as soon as he'd told her it used to be his mother's, she'd tried to give it back.

"I can't take something like that from you," she'd protested. "Your mum, I mean, what you have…" He had so few tangible things left of his mother's—it seemed wrong to take one of them away from him.

"I want you to have it," he'd said. "It doesn't do any good, just sitting around in a box, and Ma, well…" He shrugged. "She would have liked you. She'd like for you to have it."

Peggy had been touched, but still felt she couldn't just take it. "But it was hers. And your grandmother's before that. It's got to be really special to you."

He'd smiled softly and put one hand to her cheek. "It is," he'd said. "And so are you."

A warm thrill of emotion had surged up in her chest, and she'd smiled widely and sort of felt like she'd wanted to cry, and allowed him to slide the thin silver chain around her neck. She hadn't been able to find any words then, so she'd gone up on her toes and kissed him, warm and long and deep.

She looked up from the charm as movement on the other side of the room caught her attention, and she saw Martha smirking at her.

"It's _got_ to be serious if he's giving you jewelry," Martha said with a grin, looking up from the parchment she was rolling up and putting in her bag.

"And a family heirloom as well. You're practically engaged," Louise declared.

"Shut up," Peggy told her, feeling heat rising in her cheeks.

"Who would have thought Peggy Carter would be the first of us to get married?" Rose said, spinning around from her seat in front of the mirror where she was brushing her hair.

"I'm not getting married," Peggy protested. "It's a necklace."

Martha snorted. "How many of us do you see getting things like that from our boyfriends? Even Kelly's never gotten anything like that, and she and Gabe have been together longer than you and Steve have."

"Yeah, alright, we're serious, and he wanted to give me something nice. What's wrong with that?" Peggy asked.

"Nothing," Louise replied. "It is the sort of thing you give to your wife."

Peggy crumpled up a piece of parchment and threw it at Louise's head.

"Come on, be nice," Rose scolded Louise. She smiled. "Otherwise she won't invite you to the wedding."

They all laughed and gathered up their textbooks, sending her cheeky smiles as they headed for the library. Peggy looked back down at her Herbology book, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks and looking for the spot she'd lost.

"You really never should have told them it used to be his mum's," Kelly said, coming out of the bathroom.

Peggy sighed. "In retrospect, that was an error in judgement on my part."

Kelly smiled a bit at that and dropped down onto the foot of Peggy's bed. "Now that they're gone," she said, nodding towards the door. "What's really going on? I mean, it _is_ quite a serious gift."

"Yeah," Peggy agreed. She looked down at the little tree, then back up at Kelly, unable to stop herself smiling.

Kelly smiled back. Peggy didn't mind talking about this sort of thing with her—she and Gabe were quite serious as well, so she understood things like this, and she never teased or acted silly about it. "And it's a good kind of serious?" Kelly finished for her.

Peggy's smile widened, the same little thrill she'd felt when Steve had slid the necklace around her neck fluttering in her chest. "It is. I…I mean, I know he loves me, but something like this just…It makes it feel more…more…I'm not sure how to say what it's more _of_, but you—"

"I know what you mean," Kelly told her. "It's sort of a deeper level." She studied Peggy curiously. "Is it just the start of this sort of level for you two, or have you talked about the future and stuff?"

"Well, not directly," Peggy said. "Not like that, I mean. We'll talk about, you know, what sort of jobs we might want to do, or things like that, but we…" She blushed a little bit. "We sort of talk like we're going to be in the same place, you know?" She hadn't consciously realized that until Kelly asked just now, but, yeah, they _did_ do that. They used the word 'we' a lot when they talked about after school.

"So, you've thought about it?" Kelly wondered.

"Yeah." Peggy felt her blush growing deeper. "I actually…I sort of know what I want to do with my life, you know? I'd like to go on with the S.S.R. and this work and everything, but, well, when I think about it, Steve's always there somewhere too. Sometimes he's working with me, and sometimes he's doing something of his own, but he's always there." However her future unfolded exactly, she very much wanted Steve to be in it.

"So, and I'm not saying the necklace means that or anything, but if he _did_ ask you to marry him…" Kelly prompted.

Peggy bit her lip and smiled. "I would say yes." She'd say it in a heartbeat.

Kelly grinned. "I knew it." She cocked her head curiously. "What happens, though, if you get on in this S.S.R. stuff, and then you get married and Steve wants you to stay at home and do the housewife thing? I know you love him, but I know how much you love your work too. Would you give that up for him?"

Peggy didn't hesitate with her answer. "He wouldn't ask me to."

Kelly nodded. "No, I don't suppose he would."

"Do you think…" Peggy wondered. "I mean, it is still a hypothetical question, but, well, a gift like this…" She indicated the necklace. "It _does_ suggest a more serious direction. It feels right to me, but, I mean, we _are_ seventeen."

"A lot of people get married at seventeen," Kelly pointed out. "Even non-wizards, who technically have another year to go before being adults. Besides, I highly doubt he's going to ask you to marry him during school, and you'll both be eighteen by the time we're out. It's not weird. And, it's you two," she added. "If it was Martha and Dave, I would have my doubts, but…" She shrugged and smiled, and Peggy smiled back.

Perhaps it was presumptuous of her to assume Steve was thinking of asking her to marry him at all, but they were both quite good at reading each other, and it felt to Peggy as though they were on the same page. Now that she was watching out for it, she realized she'd been right—they _did_ both talk about what happened after school using a lot of the words 'we' and 'us', and that was rather exciting.

It was a few weeks of things suspiciously quiet on the Hydra front, which gave them time to settle back into the routine of school. It was enough time for Dugan to get quite bored, but the rest of them were enjoying the quiet, especially after the end of last term. Peggy was pleased to see that Rebecca seemed to be much more like her usual self—Steve had told her how worried he and Bucky had been about her over the Break, and the different things they tried to help her. For the first few days of school, Peggy did notice Rebecca clinging to Steve and Bucky rather a lot, which worried Steve. She'd seemed much better by the time they left home, but Peggy pointed out that Hogwarts was where Rebecca had gotten kidnapped, so coming back could easily be a bit unnerving. She settled in quickly, though, and Esther seemed to be doing better as well, although Peggy didn't know her as well as she knew Rebecca, but Jim seemed content with how she was doing. It still made Peggy angry, thinking about what Hydra had done to them, but she was glad they'd only been bait. What Zwart could have done to them if they'd actually been his targets didn't bear thinking about.

The new term also brought a new assistant to Howard's lab. He went through them rather quickly—Peggy gathered he wasn't the easiest man to work for—but she liked this one better than his last one. Richard had been sullen and he stared an awful lot—at her, in particular. The new assistant, Samantha, was much cheerier, and she enjoyed poking fun at Howard and let his jibes roll right off of her. She also had taken quite an interest in coming up with little devices and gadgets for Peggy to use. She'd already worked up a few more versions of the hairclip with concealed blades, and had added to Peggy's cache a pair of stud earrings that functioned as a radio, a set of flexible lockpicks that could be slid in and hidden along the underwire in her bra, and a little holster that stayed fixed in her magically expanded pockets so that she didn't have to go digging for her gun.

"Oh, good, you're here!" Samantha said when Peggy walked into the lab. "I've got something new for you!"

"Again?" Peggy asked, smiling. "Do you ever actually get anything done for Howard?"

Samantha waved off this concern. "Here," she said, proudly brandishing what appeared to be tube of lipstick.

Peggy took it and opened it. It was, in fact, a tube of lipstick.

Samantha smiled at her questioning eyebrow. "Yes, it's lipstick. I thought, you know, we've got your knives and a place to hide your gun, but what happens when you're in really close quarters and don't have the chance to get at them?"

"I throw the lipstick at someone?" Peggy guessed.

Samantha laughed. "No. It's more for self-defense than offense. Sweet Dreams Lipstick, I call it. One kiss, knocks 'em out cold."

"Really?" Peggy wasn't particularly keen on the idea of kissing anyone that she would want unconscious, but it could certainly be useful.

"Mm-hmm," Samantha confirmed. "If you want to try it on to see how it works, Howard has volunteered to get knocked out."

"Oh, of course, he would," Peggy grumbled, but she was intrigued. She pulled out a compact mirror and carefully applied the new lipstick. It wasn't really her color—too pink—but that wasn't really the point.

Howard approached, grinning broadly, and Peggy rolled her eyes. "Just a light peck on the lips is all it needs," Samantha said.

"Although, you can do more than that if you want," Howard added, smirking.

"Do you want me to knock you out with the lipstick or with this spanner here on the table?" Peggy asked.

Howard laughed and raised his hands in surrender. Peggy leaned forward, barely brushing his lips with her own. The effect was immediate. She had barely pulled away from him before he dropped into a heap on the floor.

"Wow," Peggy said.

"It's great, isn't it?" Samantha asked.

"It's brilliant," she agreed. "Hang on, if it just had to touch his lips to knock him out, how can it be on my lips without getting me?"

"It's part of the magic I worked in," Samantha explained. "It has no effect on the person applying it. So, you can leave it on all day, eat with, lick your lips, you'll be fine. But if, say, Howard put it on himself and kissed you, then it would knock you out."

"Got it. How long does it last?" Peggy wondered, nodding down at Howard.

"It varies a bit, but about fifteen minutes," Samantha said. "What do you think?"

"I think this could be really useful," Peggy said. "Thanks. Although," she added. "Not to sound ungrateful, but it's not really my color. Can it come in other colors?"

"Sure," Samantha said. "This is just a prototype. What sort of color do you usually wear?"

She spent several minutes looking through Samantha's notes and looking at color samples, trying to narrow it down to something that wouldn't look out of place on her. Howard woke up and grumbled about being left on the floor. Samantha told him that was what he got for being cheeky. She asked him how he felt and ran a couple of tests—it wasn't designed to cause any lasting harm, but she'd tried it on him a couple of times and he tended to wake up with a headache.

"I don't know there's much can be done about the headache," she said, handing him a couple of aspirin. "Not without slowing down how fast it works."

"And, let's be honest," Peggy added. "If someone's putting me in a position where I'm being forced to kiss them to knock them out, I'm alright with them waking up with a headache."

"That's fair enough," Howard said. "The rest of your guys coming down for the radio lesson?" He was forever tinkering with his radios and communication gear, periodically giving the team lessons on how to operate the new stuff.

"They should be on their way," she told him.

The rest of the team, minus Steve, showed up before too long, and Howard decided to go ahead and get started. He walked through the new features, pointing out some of the more complicated ones to Gabe and Jim, and showed them how to fit the new earpieces he developed that clipped around the back of the ear like Jacques' translator charm, instead of needing to be fastened to their shoulders.

Steve showed up as the rest of them were leaving, and though they all gave him a hard time, Howard didn't mind. He loved showing off his new inventions, and enjoyed the chance to talk about them as much as he could.

"This is really neat," Steve said when Howard was done, sliding his fingers over the little unit wrapped around his ear. "A lot more convenient. Does it stay on well if you move around?"

"It should," Howard said. "Take it with you, test it, but that's why I had it wrap around like that."

"Awesome," Steve replied. "Thanks. Sorry again I was late."

"No problem. Enjoy."

"Did your meeting with Phillips run long?" Peggy wondered.

Steve nodded. "Yeah. But he said you had something new for us to do?"

"I was going to bring it up at the meeting tomorrow, but, yes," Peggy said. "We got some word on a secret Hydra base in South America. An investigate and destroy sort of thing."

"Sounds like fun," he said with a smile. "You coming too?"

"No," she said. "One of Phillips' other teams caught another spy, and he wants me to sit in on the interrogation." She smiled. "If I play my cards right, he'll let me practice."

"Well, sounds like you'll be having your own fun, then," Steve said. "You want to go to dinner?"

She nodded and grabbed his hand, and he squeezed it and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. She remembered just too late why that was a bad idea and started to say, "No, wait!", but didn't get past the "N—" before his lips landed on hers.

"What?" he asked, pulling away, eyebrows furrowed in concern as he caught her tone, if not her words. "Is something…" He shook his head and blinked rapidly, as though he was trying to clear something from inside his head, then staggered back a step, looking dazed. "Um…"

"Sorry, I'm sorry," she said, reaching out to grab his arm as he started to sway.

"What…" he mumbled, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor.

Peggy fell with him, trying to catch him and failing, but at least stopping him cracking his head on the cement. "Sorry," she said again, positioning his head a little more comfortably on her lap. "It's not funny," she said, shooting a sharp glance up when she heard Samantha snicker.

"It's a little funny," Samantha argued. Peggy continued to glare at her, but she smiled a little bit. It was a _bit_ funny.

"So, it looks like it's strong enough to work on him too," Samantha said, making a note on one of her clipboards. "Though it takes a little longer to kick in. He'll probably wake up faster too," she added, consulting a watch in the pocket of her lab coat. She smirked and stepped over, nodding at Peggy's face and holding out a handkerchief. "Might want to wipe the rest of that off."

* * *

_Aw. Some more sweetness, as well as a little shout-out to the Agent Carter TV show (which you should totally watch if you haven't) with Peggy's special lipstick. Everything is back to normal, and the boys are ready for another mission. Tune in Monday for a trip to South America!_


	75. The Island In The Mist

_Alright, new adventure time! Off to Hydra's South American island.  
_

_(For the record, these are real islands, although since the 40's, they have been renamed to Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe Island. Me, I like the translations of the original names, personally. Farther Out To Sea is a great name for an island.)_

* * *

The journey out to Peggy's secret Hydra island was one that would take a couple of steps. They would be taking a Portkey to Más a Tierra, an island about three hundred miles off the coast of Chile and a lot farther away than any of them had ever apparated before. It was one of a pair of islands, Más a Tierra (Closer to Land) and Más Afuera (Farther Out To Sea), which Gabe chuckled was a practical, if slightly dull way to name islands. Más Afuera was their destination, but being a secret Hydra base and all, they didn't want to just land there uninvited. Más a Tierra was safer, and they were going to land there and take a boat the hundred miles to Más Afuera. Jim and Dugan were going to charm the boat to make the journey faster.

An island off the coast of South America sounded like an exotic enough location, Bucky had to admit, but there was more than just unfamiliar terrain to keep them on their toes. Más Afuera had been uninhabited for a long time before Hydra showed up, and no one was really sure what they were doing out there. It wasn't a factory, and it wasn't strategic. It may have been a lab, or it may have had something to do with the ruins on the island, though no one could find evidence of magical lore on it. The place came up very infrequently in Hydra communiques.

The first part of the journey was smooth enough. The little boat really flew along, an additional charm of Jim's keeping them from being battered by the wind like they should have been at that speed, and it seemed like no time at all before Más Afuera appeared on the horizon.

"Well, that looks…ominous," Bucky said. The island was covered in dark trees, rocky lines of mountains jutting up into sight through the foliage, and the entire thing was shrouded in thick, low-hanging mist.

"I can see the dock Peggy was talking about," Steve said, peering forward through a pair of binoculars. What information they had said there was one dock in front of a small cluster of buildings. Since Hydra were the only people on the island, they were going to go around the other side and try to get out there. "Go that way a little more," he added, waving to the north.

They couldn't really find a good place to land, so they settled for the shortest rocky wall they could find. Monty affixed the boat the wall with magic so it would stay there until they came back, and they tossed the anchor down into the rocks to add some extra stability. Gabe pulled out a few coils of rope that he and Steve magically attached to boulders above them so they could climb up.

Once they were up top, the view did nothing to contradict Bucky's earlier 'ominous' description. The trees were thick and the air felt damp and heavy. The mist hung above them, hiding the rocks that towered above them and blocking the sun that had been so bright out on the water. Bucky shivered.

"Tell me about it," Jim agreed, catching Bucky's motion.

"Is that a skull?" Gabe asked. They turned and looked where he was pointing. Underneath a bush was a grimy, yellowing human skull, grinning out at them in that eerie way that skulls did.

"Yep," Dugan said. A tiny brown lizard crawled out of one of the eye sockets.

"Lovely welcome," Monty said.

"That's been here a while, whoever it is," Steve said.

"So has Hydra," Bucky added. "It's got to be one of them."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "No one else lives on this island." He sighed and looked around at the mist. "So, either something dangerous around here killed him, or he pissed his crew off and they got him. Either way…"

"We're gonna wanna be careful," Jim finished for him.

Steve consulted his little compass from Peggy that pointed to wherever you were trying to go. The arrow spun and pointed off to the south east. "Buildings are that way," Steve said. "Let's go."

"Does Peggy know you stuck her picture inside that thing?" Bucky asked as they started walking, nodding at the compass.

Steve shrugged. "Maybe?"

Bucky grinned. "You should tell her. She'd think it was sweet."

"How about we focus on the creepy island and dead Hydra guy in the bushes?" Steve asked, but he smiled a little.

It was a good thing they'd started this thing early in the morning, because the island was proving difficult to cross. The trees were thick, devoid of paths, and they kept coming across rocky crags or ravines that needed careful crossing. It wasn't hot, but the air was thick and heavy and Bucky found himself sweating anyway.

They didn't come across much in the way of wildlife beyond the odd bird or lizard. After a couple of hours of that, Monty pointed out that that was probably good—if the skull on the cliff had met its demise at the hands of some sort of creature, he would have noticed signs of some sort of large predator by now. They did find another skull not too long after that, though this one was accompanied by an assortment of bones. None of them appeared to have been chewed on, which confirmed Monty's theory, but made Bucky worry a little bit. Yeah, Hydra liked to kill people, but _other_ people. Was something making them turn on themselves?

"I don't know if I like these dead guys," Steve said quietly to him when they took a break for food and water. His thoughts were turning the same way Bucky's were. "One guy, maybe he stepped out of line or something, but two? And they're a good ways apart from each other. They didn't get killed at the same time."

"I know," Bucky said. "I don't like it either."

"Maybe there's something to the ruins after all," Steve said. "Peggy said no one really knows what they are, and there's no lore on them. But that doesn't mean there's nothing here."

Bucky swallowed nervously. Last time they'd gone into something more magical than they'd bargained for, he'd ended up with Schmidt inside his head, and the time before that, Steve had been eaten by a giant snake. "Should we check them out before we hit the Hydra base?" Bucky wondered. He wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect, but if there _was_ something out there, he'd rather know what it was.

Steve considered, chewing his sandwich thoughtfully. "If it's too much of a detour, I don't like the idea of spending more time than we need to and giving Hydra a better chance of noticing we're here. But the idea of something magical out there that we don't know about is not exactly reassuring. Does Jacques still have that map?"

They didn't know much about the island, but Jacques had a map containing what information they had. There was a rough location of the ruins on it, and after some consulting with the compass and some calculations, they realized they would pass them on their way to the Hydra buildings anyway. The team agreed it was a stop worth making.

It took another hour to arrive at the ruins, and once they did, they realized they would have had to go through them whether they wanted to or not. The mountains sloped up in a steep incline on either side of the ruins, leaving them with no other way to pass without going a hell of a long way around.

They eyed the ruins carefully before moving in. There wasn't a lot to them—a few flat areas of stone or toppled pillars, a crumbling section of wall or a set of stairs leading to nowhere. All of it was mossy and broken, carved out of the same dark stone that the island was made of.

"Well, it doesn't _feel_ magical," Jim said. He waved his wand, running a little spell. "Nothing I'm picking up. But it…"

"It's still pretty creepy," Gabe finished for him.

"Yeah," Jim agreed.

"Well, everyone make sure to keep an eye out," Steve said. "Just because we don't see it doesn't mean there's nothing here. Be careful, but let's move through as quick as we can." He didn't want to spend any more time in here than they had to either.

Bucky's eyes darted everywhere as they moved through the ruins. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was about the place that sent shivers down his spine. It was old and falling apart, but it didn't have the feel that somewhere haunted or cursed might. The mist was thick and heavy and kept any of them from seeing very far, but it wasn't _that_ bad. There weren't even any statues or carvings that would have suggested a sinister purpose for this place. For all he knew, it could have just been some regular old village. But why did it creep him out so much?

"Well, this is…different," Monty said. Bucky looked over to where he was standing. A large flat area in front of him, easily the size of the Hufflepuff common room, was paved over in small stones. The stones were smooth, and seemed clean despite the weathering all the other ones had taken, and they were slightly redder than the rest of the stones. In the center was a little stone slab about waist high, no wider than a manhole cover.

"Is it weird how _un_magical this is?" Jim asked. "I'm getting nothing, but it…well, _look_ at it!"

"I know," Dugan agreed, casting some spells of his own. "It's like…" He paused thoughtfully. "It's like it should be magic, but it isn't."

"That's bad, isn't it?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, but I couldn't tell you why," Dugan said. "It just feels wrong."

"We should go around it," Bucky said.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He nodded to the grass to the left of the flat area.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Jim said as they drew more level with the little slab in the middle. "Do you feel that?"

"Uh huh," Dugan agreed. "Whatever is wrong is getting stronger."

"Yeah, I can feel it now," Steve said.

Bucky could feel it too, though he still couldn't say what _it_ was. He tried to swallow back down the panic rising in his chest as he was very unpleasantly reminded of how wrong everything had felt in the naquadah mine, right before Schmidt…

"Pick up the pace," Steve said.

They started moving faster, but something was happening. The air around them went dead silent, and a deep, throbbing bass note that Bucky felt more than heard rolled out from the little stone slab, and he shivered as he felt it pass through him. As quickly as it happened, it vanished, and everything felt normal again.

"What the hell was that?" Gabe demanded. Even though everything felt normal, everyone looked as freaked out as Bucky felt.

"I don't know, I…" Jim began, raising his wand and checking. His face fell in horror.

"Jim?" Steve asked.

"My wand's not working," Jim said quietly.

The rest of them pulled out their own wands, all trying some sort of spell. Nothing, and Bucky felt nausea surging in his gut. His wand wasn't working either. His cherry and phoenix feather wand was just a stick now. It was like...he felt like he'd lost a limb.

"Okay, we need to get away from that thing," Steve said with a nod at the slab, trying to sound calm, but looking just as freaked out as Bucky felt.

"Yeah," Dugan said. "Maybe it's affecting the wands somehow. There are dark objects that…Maybe they'll start working again if we get far enough away from it."

"Qu'a t'il dit?" Jacques asked.

"He said we should move away from the thing and maybe our wands will work again," Gabe said.

Jacques shook his head, confused. "Je ne comprends pas ce que tu dis."

"Aw, crap," Gabe breathed. He and Jacques launched into a rapid conversation in French before Gabe turned back to the rest of them looking pained. "His translator's not working anymore."

"Okay," Steve said. "Let's get the _hell_ away from that thing."

They hurried off quickly, moving until they were past the flat stone area, then running until they were at the edge of the ruins and in the forest again.

"Whoa!" Monty exclaimed, accompanied by a loud ripping sound and a series of clanks and clatters. His weapons bag was in shreds, swords, knives, guns and curse bombs scattered across the ground.

"What just…" Bucky asked.

"It just…exploded," Monty said, confused. "Everything came just bursting out."

Jim furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "If that thing cancels magic…" His eyes went wide. "Quick, Bucky, open up your bag and turn it over!"

Bucky did so, Jim doing the same, and he understood why just as he undid the clasp on his bag. The bigger-on-the-inside charm wasn't working anymore, and there wasn't room inside for everything. The contents of his bag came spilling out, though since they had an escape route, the bag itself stayed intact.

"Oh, man," Gabe breathed, eyeing the piles of gear on the ground. "What the hell was that thing?"

"And why is it still working?" Dugan wondered. "All our magic was working when we were this far away from it on the other side."

Monty looked up from one of the inert curse bombs he was inspecting. "You don't think it actually…_destroyed_ all our magic, do you?"

They all looked at each other. "I've never heard of anything doing that," Jim said at last. "But, I…" he trailed off hopelessly and shook his head.

"Steve, what do you…" Bucky started to ask, the question dying on his lips as he turned. Steve had one hand propped against a tree, leaning on it heavily as he closed his eyes and breathed like he was trying not to throw up. "Steve, are you okay?"

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "Something's wrong," he said softly.

"What—"

"Aaah!" Steve cried, clutching at his stomach and bending over double, his face scrunched up in pain.

"Steve!" Bucky exclaimed, hurrying to his side. Jim was only a few steps behind. "What's wrong?"

"It hurts," Steve hissed between clenched teeth, dropping to his knees and curling up as tightly as he could manage.

Bucky dropped down beside him, shooting a worried look at Jim, who looked just as lost as he felt. Steve continued groaning in pain, then he let out a pained scream, curling in on himself tighter than anyone his size should have been able to. Bucky reached out for him but stopped, his hand hovering just inches above his shoulder. His uniform was starting to slip off his shoulder, and Steve didn't…He didn't just _look_ smaller, he actually _was_ smaller, and…

The hand that had been reaching out to Steve flew back up to cover Bucky's mouth as horrified realization slammed into place. Whatever had just happened was undoing all the magic they had. And the serum in Steve's blood…God help him, it was magic. Active magic. And it was falling apart.

Bucky couldn't do anything but stare, and though it couldn't have taken more than a minute or two, it seemed like an eternity that he was just locked in place watching Steve scream. Then it was over and Steve was breathing hard and shaking, pushing himself to his knees on trembling, skinny little arms.

"What the hell?" Bucky heard Dugan whisper from somewhere behind him. They were all staring in horrified disbelief at a Steve they hadn't seen in two years, short and thin and, holy cow, Bucky had forgotten how incredibly _fragile_ he used to look.

"Steve?" he croaked.

Steve pushed himself up a little straighter to look at him, the motion shrugging his now-enormous uniform off of one scrawny shoulder. The movement of the fabric caught his eye and he looked away from Bucky and down at his arm.

"No," he whispered.

"Steve…" Bucky started, reaching forward but not really sure where to go from there.

"No," Steve said again, sitting back on his knees and looking down at himself. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" He was holding his hands up, staring at them as though he'd never seen them before. "No!" His eyes jumped up and locked on to Bucky's, helpless pleading swimming in their bright blue depths. "No, I—" His breath hitched in his throat, his little chest heaving. "I—" He was having trouble getting anything out past that, and the panicked churning in Bucky's stomach twisted into even tighter knots as he realized Steve wasn't having trouble speaking because he was so distraught—the exertion of his transformation and the mounting panic were ramping up into the first asthma attack he'd had in over two years.

"Hey, whoa, Stevie, you've gotta breathe," he told him, grabbing his shoulders and ignoring how thin and bony they felt.

"I—" Steve gasped. "No, no, I—"

"I know you're freaked out, and I don't know what the hell is going on, but we'll figure this out, Stevie, I swear we will, but right now I need you to try to breathe." They had no magic and Steve hadn't needed an inhaler in more than two years, so Bucky sure as hell didn't have one on him, and if this exploded into a full-blown asthma attack, Bucky had no idea what he was going to do.

Steve was still gasping for breath and Bucky wasn't sure how much of what he was saying was actually penetrating the panic in Steve's head right now, so he sat down on the ground, tugging Steve with him and spinning him so that his back was against Bucky's chest. Bucky would have liked very much to panic right along with Steve, but he forced himself to breathe slow and deep, his chest rising and falling in steady motions. "Like this," he told Steve, putting one hand on Steve's chest to hold him steady. "Just breathe like me. You remember this, right? Sure, you do." It had been a really long time since Bucky had needed to do this for Steve, but it came rushing back like it was yesterday. "Slow and steady," he encouraged. "That's it. Deep breaths. Just in..." He inhaled deeply, held it for several seconds as he felt Steve struggle to do the same. "And out." He exhaled slowly and felt Steve let out a stuttering breath of his own. "There you go," he said, patting his chest warmly. "Okay, let's do it again."

He kept breathing as calmly as he could manage. Steve was doing his best to follow along, and he was breathing a little bit easier now, but it still didn't sound like he was getting enough air. Bucky shot a worried glance over at Jim, who was digging through the mountain of supplies that had spilled out of his bag. Bucky didn't know what in there would work if nothing magic was working right now, but if anyone could find something that would, it was Jim Morita. He focused on helping Steve breathe, and his own breath caught in his throat in surprise when Jim crouched down in front of them with an inhaler.

"Here," he said, and Steve reached up a shaking hand to take it.

Steve put the inhaler to his mouth and closed his eyes, breathing in as deep as he could. After a couple more inhales that were just a little too shaky, he took another pull and that one seemed to settle him. He sat there with his eyes closed for a minute, just focusing on his breathing and making sure he could do it now. Bucky sat back, but left one hand resting on Steve's back until he felt his lungs expanding and filling the way they should.

"Thanks," Steve whispered, looking up at Jim.

Jim nodded back, a sad ghost of his usual smile on his face. "Had that on me for all those factory missions, in case we came across a prisoner or somebody who needed it. It's probably not the same dosage you used to use, but why don't you hang on to it?"

Steve nodded glumly. He turned his head to look back at Bucky, nodding his thanks, though his cheeks were red with embarrassment and he kind of looked like he wanted to cry.

A long, incredibly uncomfortable silence passed as they all stood there wondering what in the hell to do now. "What in the bloody hell just happened?" Monty asked at last.

"When that thing cancelled out everything magical, it wasn't screwing around," Dugan said. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. "I'm gonna go back and take a look at it."

"Are you crazy?" Gabe asked.

Dugan gestured at the circle they were standing in, taking in Steve, the piles of gear and their malfunctioning wands. "What else is it gonna do?" he demanded. "Maybe if we can figure out what it is, we can do something about it."

"I'll come with you," Jim said, standing back up. He looked back down at Steve. "You okay?"

Steve nodded again. Jim nodded back, clearly not knowing what else to say, then walked away with Dugan.

"Steve, I…" Bucky started. He had no idea what to say to even come close to helping. "Are you hurt?" he asked at last.

"No," Steve said quietly. He tugged the shoulder of his uniform back up forlornly. "It's gone, Bucky," he rasped. "All of it. Everything I…" He stopped, his voice wavering dangerously.

"We'll figure it out, Steve," Bucky said.

"How?" Steve asked flatly. "Nobody ever figured out how Erskine's serum worked. They can't make it again. I'm…" He looked down at his hands again in dismay. "I'm stuck like this."

"Maybe not," Bucky said, though he knew he was grasping at straws. "Maybe it's not gone. Maybe it and the rest of our magic is just…off. It could come back."

Steve sniffed and didn't look up, clearly not convinced.

"Steve?" Jacques asked from behind them a little tentatively. They turned and saw him standing there with a bundle of material in his hands. "J'avais, euh, ceux-ci dans mon sac, et je pensais que vous voudriez peut-être quelque chose qui vous va mieux." He extended his hands, offering the spare set of clothes he'd pulled out of his backpack. They would still be kind of big, but they would fit Steve a lot better than his uniform would.

"Thanks," Steve said, managing a tiny smile at the gesture. He accepted the clothes and stood up, kicking off his giant boots and holding up his uniform awkwardly as he walked back behind some bushes to change.

"Thanks, man," Bucky said, smiling at Jacques.

Jacques nodded, then returned to helping Monty sort through the gear from his bag. Bucky busied himself going through his own stuff while he waited for Steve. There was no way he'd be able to carry all of this with him now, and deciding what to keep and what to leave kept his mind off of the much scarier problem of Steve and what they were going to do.

"Do you have any rope or something?" Steve asked, coming back out from behind the bushes. Jacques wasn't particularly tall, but he was taller than Steve, and stockier—his shirt hung loosely on Steve, but it worked, especially with the sleeves rolled up like that. He'd rolled up the pants too, though he was holding onto the waist, which was too big to stay up on its own. Bucky did have some rope, and he cut a length of it so Steve could fashion himself a belt out of it.

"Um," Bucky started. "So…"

"Can we not talk about it right now?" Steve asked. His voice was a little steadier than it had been before, but he in no way looked alright. "I'm just, I'm _this_ close to freaking out, and I can't, I can't do that right now. I need to be able to hold it together until…" Until _when_, Bucky wasn't sure, and he didn't think Steve knew either, but Steve was right that it wasn't exactly the ideal place for a breakdown.

"Okay," Bucky told him. And who knew? Maybe Dugan and Jim would get something figured out and they could fix things. Steve sat down next to him and helped him sort through his stuff with the intense focus of someone determinedly avoiding thinking about something else, and if that was what he needed to steady himself right now, then Bucky would help him maintain it. They discussed every item that had been in the bag and the pros and cons of keeping or discarding each one.

In the end, there wasn't an awful lot of it he had to abandon completely. Important things went back into his bag, and some smaller stuff could go in his pockets. Weapons went on his back and his belt, and Steve had the bright idea of tying some of the bulkier stuff together with the rope and fixing it to the outsides of some of the backpacks. It was heavier, but still portable that way. That was especially useful as far as all the cooking gear went, and Monty used some of the rope for his weapons cache as well, though there was more of that he would have to leave behind.

By moving some of their gear around, they were hoping to make as much room for Jim's medical stuff as they could, and once Jim and Dugan got back from their investigating, they'd be moving on. To where, no one was sure yet, but it was going to be dark before too long, and they'd need a place to spend the night.

"Hey, Steve?" Gabe said. "Here. I think we're gonna get going soon, and you shouldn't be hiking around this place barefoot." Gabe was carrying a pair of shoes. Bucky had actually been wondering about that—like his uniform, Steve's boots were way too big for him now.

Steve took them uncertainly. "Where'd you get these?"

"They're Jim's," Gabe said. "His feet are closer to your size than Jacques'."

"What's Jim going to wear?"

"Jacques' shoes."

"And Jacques—"

"Let me stop you right there," Gabe said, cutting him off with a smile. "We're playing musical shoes. Dugan's gonna wear your boots, I'm gonna wear his, Bucky's gonna wear mine, Monty's gonna wear Bucky's, Jacques' gonna wear Monty's and Jim's gonna wear his. We'll all be in shoes a little too big, but we can stuff socks or whatever down in the toes, and everybody has shoes this way."

Steve looked down at Jim's shoes in his hands and then back up, smiling at Gabe. "Thanks," he said softly. He looked a little embarrassed, but touched at the same time.

Bucky took Gabe's shoes from him and handed his over to Gabe to give to Monty, and they got back to packing up the rest of the gear. They had everything they were taking repacked by the time Jim and Dugan came back.

"So, whatcha got?" Gabe asked.

"Well," Dugan said. "It's a little hard to know for sure, since we can't exactly test the thing, but we think it's some sort of protective device for the island. Once it's on, it cancels any magical activity in the vicinity—I'm guessing it covers the whole island, which is why it's still working even though we're farther away from it now. Whoever used to live here must have had some serious beef with some wizards at some point."

"Can you turn it off?" Bucky asked.

"Nope. I'm still not really sure how it got turned on," Jim said. "But the good news is, it's got a limited range. I mean, the whole island, yeah, but not beyond that."

"So if we get off the island…" Monty began hopefully.

Jim and Dugan looked at each other. "_Hopefully_, everything will start to work again," Dugan said.

"You're saying that way too carefully to make me feel better about this," Gabe said.

"It's the best we've got," Dugan said a little shortly.

"Okay," Bucky said. Steve usually stepped in before arguments started, but he didn't look very inclined to say anything right now. He pulled his grandfather's watch out of his pocket and checked the time. "We've got at most an hour and a half before it gets dark. If this isn't something we can fix right now, let's table the discussion and find a place to spend the night."

The other guys looked at one another and nodded, picking up their gear and getting ready to set off. They started walking, Bucky and Steve soon bringing up the rear. That's right, Steve used walk a lot slower, didn't he? His legs were a lot shorter, his lungs couldn't take in as much air, and the thick, moist air wasn't the easiest thing to breathe in the first place—never mind the uneven, hilly terrain and all the roots and branches to step over or crawl around. Thankfully, the rest of the guys were keeping a slower pace too. Bucky sighed. This was going to take some getting used to.

They hiked for nearly an hour. Steve said very little, lost in his own thoughts. Bucky was doing a lot of thinking too—or as much as he could while getting slapped in the face by tree branches and wet leaves. Dugan hoped that the effect of whatever that thing was would wear off after they got off the island, and Bucky was clinging to the hope that was true. He didn't know what they were going to do if it wasn't. Steve was just going on autopilot right now, trying and failing to contain the devastation that Bucky could feel practically rolling off of him. If he was stuck like this…Bucky swallowed hard. It might just kill him.

They still hadn't found a clear patch big enough to camp in, but the trees thinned out as they neared a rocky incline, and the flat area on top looked like it might do the trick. Bucky was glad they were finding a stopping place. They kept slowing down their pace, but Steve was still panting, breathing hard and clearly nearing a breaking point.

The way up the rocks was a little crooked, but mostly patches of sandy gravel between the large boulders. They had to go up in single file to get through some of the tighter spaces. About halfway up, Steve stopped and just stood there for a second, and it was hard to tell with the over-sized shirt hiding the outline of his body, but he looked like he was shaking.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, picking up his pace to catch up from behind him.

Steve didn't appear to have heard him right away, taking a worryingly long time to turn his head to look at Bucky. Sweat was beaded all along his hairline and he looked gray and disoriented. "Um," he said slowly. "I don't…" His eyes rolled back and he dropped before Bucky got close enough to catch him, sliding on the loose gravel and tumbling several yards back down the slope.

"Steve!" Bucky exclaimed, hurrying after him. The others had stopped and turned, and he was vaguely aware of Jim coming down behind him.

Bucky skidded to a stop beside Steve, kneeling next to him and rolling him onto his back. He was covered in dust, and the left half of his face was scraped and bloody from his slide through the rocky dirt. "Steve?" he asked, leaning in and checking for a pulse. He was breathing, a little erratically, but breathing, but his heart was thumping fast and uneven against the hand Bucky laid on his chest. His heart. Oh, crap, his heart. Bucky had been so worried about his breathing, it had gotten pushed right out of his head. "I'm sorry, Stevie," he said, his hands brushing the dust from the front of Steve's shirt as they searched for something to do. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Oh, please be okay! Please—" He felt Jim crashing to a stop next to them.

"What happened?" Jim asked, checking his breath, finding a pulse and counting heartbeats. "Did he have another asthma attack?"

"No," Bucky said, shaking his head numbly. "It's his heart, the heart arrythmia. Jim, I forgot about his heart! I can't believe I forgot!"

"Okay, you're gonna need to stop freaking out, or I'm gonna have to slap you so I can focus on Steve," Jim said, and Bucky nodded. Right. Right, Jim needed to concentrate so he could help Steve. Bucky should have remembered this, though. It didn't matter that it hadn't been an issue in over two years, he should have remembered right away, and he was a terrible, terrible person for forgetting.

"You got water?" Jim asked. Bucky handed him a canteen, and he poured some of it into Steve's mouth, lifting his head up a little to help him swallow. "Has this ever happened before?" he asked.

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. He was twelve last time it happened, though. They switched up his medication after that and it got a lot better. Jim, I don't have any of his medicine, I—"

Jim reached up a hand and put it over Bucky's mouth. "Sh," he told him. "He's okay. He's gonna be okay, but you need to stop it."

"He's gonna be okay?" Bucky asked when Jim removed his hand. This _had_ happened a couple of times before when Steve had been smaller, but, unlike an asthma attack, it wasn't anything Bucky had been able to help with. They'd always taken him to the hospital.

"He is," Jim said. "See? Look." He grabbed Bucky's hand and placed it over Steve's heart. The beat wasn't as even as it should have been, but it was starting to slow back down to something normal. "It's a defense mechanism. His heart got overworked, so his body shut itself down so it would stop doing the thing that was overworking his heart."

"We always had to take him to the hospital when this happened," Bucky said, still not sure this was right.

"Well, yeah, ideally, we should do that too, but it's not exactly an option out here," Jim said. "Look, I'm gonna keep a really close eye on him, and once we get up top," he said with a nod at the top of the hill. "I've got some stuff in my bag that I think will help, but just letting him rest will help a lot." He wrapped a hand around Bucky's forearm and smiled sadly. "We pushed him too hard, and things are all so freaky and messed up right now…You're not the only one who forgot about his heart," he said gently.

Jim took some of the stuff off Bucky's back so he wouldn't be off-balance when he picked up Steve and stood back up. He shifted to get him a little more securely in his arms and started walking again. He'd forgotten how light he was.

There was a flat space up at the top of the hill, and Bucky laid Steve down carefully out of the way of setting up camp. Once they were all sure Steve would be okay, Monty and Gabe started setting up the tents that had been tied to the back of their backpacks, Jacques was refilling canteens from a nearby stream, and Dugan was prowling around trying to figure out how to set up security without any magic. Jim and Bucky used the water from the canteens to wash the dirt off of Steve's face and arms, and Jim found some ointment to dab into all the scrapes to keep them from getting infected. He also dug something out of his bag and gave him a few drops to help with his heart rate. Bucky kept checking Steve's heartbeat, and it had finally resumed a normal rhythm, though he remained unconscious. Jim finally had to order Bucky to go help with dinner and be productive before he worried himself so sick he started puking.

"I've got him, Sarge," Jim assured him. "He's gonna be okay."

"Alright," Bucky agreed quietly, not sure what else to do. Steve would be okay. He would. Bucky wasn't going to let him be anything else.

* * *

_So, this is a new problem, and without magic, our boys are going to have to be extra-resourceful to get out of this one._

_Tune in Friday to see what happens next!_


	76. The Measure Of A Man

_So, Steve is unexpectedly tiny, and now that they've made camp for the night, there's a lot to think through. Time for some introspection.  
_

* * *

Steve had woken up with a pounding head and an aching chest to Bucky and Jim hovering nervously over him. For one brief instant, he'd forgotten what happened, but then it all came screaming back. That magic, or anti-magic, rolling through his body. The pain that felt like the reverse of Project: Rebirth, but equally as agonizing. The small, weak limbs and the struggling to breathe and the fluttering heart. He didn't quite remember passing out on the hill, but if his heart had been acting up, he would have been pretty disoriented.

Jim had checked him over as thoroughly as he could without magic, and though he declared that he would be fine as long as he got some food and rest, everyone wouldn't stop staring at him. It was a very quiet dinner, and Steve kept trying to remind himself that all the other guys had lost their magic and he wasn't the only one having a hard time right now, but it felt a lot like the time he'd gotten on the train after his ma had died and no one had been sure how to act or what to say. He'd said something back then that had eased things over a little, but he didn't have it in him now. He'd just eaten his meal, washed his dishes, and been relieved when Jim ordered him to go to his tent and get some rest.

He lay there on top of his sleeping bag for a little while, listening to the sounds of the other guys cleaning up for the night. They were too far away to make out any words, and Steve was really trying not to feel sorry for himself, he really was, but he couldn't stop imagining that they were all talking about him. He felt incredibly embarrassed about his panic-induced asthma attack in front of all of them earlier and the fact that he knew they'd kept slowing down for him, never mind passing out and falling down the hill. He rolled over onto his side, scrunching up his face and trying not to cry. When he'd taken the serum, he hadn't thought about how big or strong it would make him. He'd just been happy it was enough to let him go after his friends and save them. The health and the strength and the stamina, that had all been a bonus, but he'd really come to depend on it. And now it was gone. He'd lost all of it and he was little and weak and useless again, and he couldn't go back to that, he couldn't. Not now that he knew what he _could_ be.

He heard the front of the tent zip open and then closed again, a soft, warm light appearing as Bucky came inside with a lantern. "Hey, Steve," he said softly.

"Hey," Steve whispered back, not rolling over.

"How you feeling?" Bucky asked.

"Fine," he replied. The scrapes on his face and his arm stung, but his heart was okay and his lungs were working as well as they could in this humid air. Sure. He was fine.

Bucky was quiet for a minute, rolling out his sleeping bag. "I'm sorry about what happened on the hill," he said. "I didn't realize how hard we were pushing you, and I should have remembered about your heart." Steve rolled over to look at him, and Bucky's eyes were shining in the lantern light. "I thought for a minute when you collapsed…" He shook his head. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, Buck," Steve replied. He meant that, even if he couldn't muster the smile he was trying for. "I forgot about it too." Yeah, he'd known since he was little again the heart trouble would be back, but he'd forgotten what exactly that meant until it was too late to do anything about it. "I'm alright," he added.

Bucky nodded, though he still didn't look ready to absolve himself completely. He inhaled deeply. "What can I do to help?" he asked.

Steve sighed and sat up. "I don't know. I…" He'd been holding this back all afternoon, determined not to break down in front of everyone. Again. He didn't really want to do it in front of Bucky either, but it was getting hard to hold it all in. "It's all back," he whispered. "All of it. The heart condition and the trouble breathing; the headaches from trying to see things far away; that stupid ankle that's always sore and the way all my joints just…" He gestured down at himself. "_Hurt_." He sighed. "I can't walk fast and I get tired easy, and I…" He swallowed hard. "Back before, when I was little before, being sick and small and everything sucked, but I was used to it, you know? I never knew any better. But now…" He swallowed down another lump in his throat. "Now I know what it's like to be healthy. I know what I'm missing and that makes it _so much_ worse."

Bucky was looking at him sadly, and that made it that much harder to keep the tears that were prickling in his eyes from falling. "I can't go back to that," he said. "I can't. And I can't…" He drew in a shaking breath. Even worse than being sick and small and fragile again, even worse was the fact that now he was a burden to the team. He couldn't go out and fight Hydra, couldn't save anyone, couldn't make a difference anymore. "I got this taste of something…incredible, and I don't want to be useless again, Bucky, I _can't_, I can't do it!" He lost the battle with his tears but he couldn't find it in him to care anymore.

"Stevie, no," Bucky said, just as Steve had known he would. "You're not useless."

"Bucky, look at me!" Steve snapped. Bucky always believed in him, and Steve appreciated that, he really did, but there was a cold, hard reality to face here. "I've been like this for, what, like three hours? I've already slowed the team down, passed out because my stupid heart won't let me walk up a mountain, and freaked everybody out. And what happens when we get into a fight, huh? We've got Hydra guys somewhere on this island we're gonna run into, and what am I gonna do then? I can't fight anybody like this! I can't hit or run or take anybody down." He swallowed hard. "I can't use my shield. I'd just be in the way, and if we still had magic, I couldn't use that either because my magic sucks! I can't do anything! I know you're just trying to make me feel better, but don't lie to me, alright? I'm no good to anybody like this."

Bucky opened his mouth to say something, but they both stopped short as the zipper on the front of the tent slid open again. A familiar bowler hat and mustache appeared as Dugan poked his head through the opening he'd just made, and Steve quickly dashed his hands across his face, rubbing away the tears that had been streaking down it.

"Hey," Dugan said a little awkwardly. "I was just walking the perimeter, and I didn't mean to eavesdrop or anything, but, you know, canvas isn't exactly soundproof…"

Steve flushed so deeply he could feel his ears burning, and it took everything he had not to start crying again. Dugan had just heard his entire breakdown, and he hadn't thought he could feel more pathetic than he already did, but it turned out he was wrong.

"Anyway," Dugan continued. "He's right, you know," he said, sticking a thumb inside to hook it in Bucky's direction. "You're not useless, Steve," he said, and the use of his name was what really made Steve stop and listen. Anymore, even around school, Dugan always referred to him as 'Cap'.

"Phillips didn't put you in charge of us because of how big you were, and the rest of us aren't following you because you could bench-press a truck. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, it's nice when you can do all that, but, big tough guy who punches his way out of a fight?" He smiled. "That's my job." Steve almost smiled at that.

"You're the leader—you're our Captain," Dugan said, pointing at him. "Because you've got the brains to put an op together and make sure we all survive it. Because you've got the guts to charge into anywhere where there's something that needs doing. Because you've got the heart to help as many people as you can, even if it hurts. Because you know what's right and you fight for it. Because you never give up. _That_ is why you're the Captain. _That_ is why me and the rest of the boys'll follow you to hell and back. And all of that? You had all that way before you got taller than me. And you've still got it now."

He was smiling warmly, and Steve found himself wanting to cry again, not out of embarrassment or fear, but because of how deeply touched he was.

"And, you know, I figure you know all that," Dugan said with a shrug. "But it's been a rough day. I thought maybe a reminder wouldn't hurt." He flashed him a quick smile. "I should probably get back to my rounds now. Me, Jacques and Gabe have got security tonight, so the rest of you can rest easy." He tipped his hat. "Goodnight, Captain." He turned to Bucky and repeated the gesture. "Goodnight, Sergeant. I'll see you two in the morning." His face vanished and he zipped the tent back up, disappearing into the night.

Steve was sitting there, dumbstruck. He didn't think he'd ever heard Dugan say that much at one time before that didn't have to do with blowing things up or the technicality of spells, and certainly never anything that…_meaningful_. He swallowed down a lump of grateful emotion in his throat.

Bucky leaned over and nudged him with his elbow, smiling warmly. "What he said," he said with a nod at the door of the tent, surprising a very watery laugh out of Steve.

"Listen, Steve," he said after a minute. "I know…I mean, this is, it's all kinds of messed up. You've got every right to freak out. I'm not holding that against you, and neither is anyone else. There are all kinds of things you are more than entitled to be upset about, but your value isn't one of them. And I know you think I'm just saying that because I'm supposed to say things like that, but that's not it. I'm saying because it's true. Dugan knows it. So do the rest of the guys." He smiled sadly. "Erskine knew it. That's why he gave you that stuff in the first place. Because what's in here…" He reached over and tapped a finger against Steve's chest, and Steve's breath caught in his throat as his friend unknowingly echoed Erskine's last gesture. "That's what's important, and that's what made the big guy special. So, yeah, be upset if you need to, but not because you think you're worthless. Okay?"

"Okay," Steve whispered, all he could manage. He felt, well, _better_ was maybe stretching things, but a little piece of something in his soul was settling.

He sniffed, dashing a hand across his nose and feeling a little bad about getting snot on Jacques' shirt. He'd make sure to wash it for him after he…after he got his own small clothes and everything. He sniffed again. "Bucky, what if I'm stuck like this?" he asked fearfully. Even with the support of his team, the prospect of being stuck in this weak little body again terrified him.

Bucky sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "I know you're not really in a place where you can right now, but I'm holding on to the hope that this'll get undone somehow. But if it doesn't…" He trailed off, bit his lip. "If it doesn't, whatever happens, you're not gonna be in it alone, man."

Steve smiled gratefully. "I know." He knew he never would be. Bucky was with him 'til the end of the line. He sniffed again, and the tears welling up in his eyes started trickling out again. He wasn't alone, but he was still scared.

"C'mere," Bucky said, looping his arms around Steve's shoulders and pulling him over next to him and into a hug. Steve folded into the embrace, and he fit against Bucky like he always did. He cried into his chest, letting out everything that he was so scared of and didn't have words for, and Bucky just held on and let him, and when he finally cried himself out, the last thing he remembered feeling before falling asleep was safe.

It was dark when he woke up, but after a couple of seconds, Steve realized it was because he was under his sleeping bag. They'd been sitting on top of Bucky's sleeping bag, and when he'd fallen asleep, Bucky must have reached over and unzipped Steve's sleeping bag, pulling it over the both of them like a blanket instead of trying to get Steve inside his own and risk waking him up.

He rolled out carefully from under Bucky's arm, shivering as he exited the pocket of warmth under the sleeping bag and hit the chilly ground. His joints were stiff and sore, either from sleeping on the ground, the cold air, or because that's just how he was now. Probably a combination of all three. He bent and stretched and quietly exited the tent.

The sun was up, though the mist was too thick to see the sunrise. It was kind of pretty, he supposed, the dark stone and the thick green of the foliage, sunlight filtering softly through the mist and birds chirping somewhere in the trees. He headed for the stream to wash up, smiling as he stepped over the line of string with all their spoons attached to it that was evidently part of Dugan's non-magical alarm system. The water was freezing, but it woke him up the rest of the way, and it felt good to get the dirt and the rest of the sticky residue from Jim's ointment off his face. He dried his face off on Jacques' shirt and sat on a rock, staring at his reflection in the water.

The skinny little face staring back at him was familiar and strange, like someone he remembered from a dream. Was this really who he was now? He sighed deeply. Okay. Okay, maybe it was. So, what now? He still wasn't sure what good he could be like this, but he mulled over Dugan's words from last night. Of all the people on the team, Dugan was the last person he would have expected such an emotional declaration from. He wouldn't have just said that to make Steve feel better. If he hadn't meant it, he just wouldn't've said anything. Steve picked up a stick and poked it thoughtfully into the water. Dugan had really meant that. He knew Bucky had reinforced Dugan's statement, and Bucky had meant it too, but the fact that it had come from such an unexpected source…

He poked the water with his stick again and some of the mud on the bottom swirled up, obscuring his reflection for a moment. He thought he saw in the swirls the ghost of a different face, older, thin and bearded, with a flash of light on the water mimicking the glint on a pair of glasses. Bucky had mentioned Erskine last night, but Steve had been too overwhelmed to dwell on the memory of his old teacher. Erskine had seen the value in him too. He'd seen it long before Steve's physical change, and he…Steve swallowed down a knot in his throat. Erskine had never seen him put the serum to use. He'd never known him as Captain America. He'd only ever known him as the small, weak boy that he was again now, and he'd still thought Steve was worth it. Steve thought back to the last real conversation the two of them had had, him wondering why Erskine had chosen him for the project, and Erskine telling him his reasons. They were the same kinds of things that Dugan had said, that Bucky had said—things that made him worth so much more than the body he was in.

Steve wasn't sure if he could live up to all of that, but he knew for sure there was one thing they'd been right about. He didn't give up. So the least he could do was square his skinny little shoulders back and try to stop feeling sorry for himself. He didn't know if he could manage the rest of it, but he could do that. And if it turned out he was stuck like this…He swallowed down a wave of panicked nausea at the thought. If he _was_ stuck like this, he would roll with the punch and try to figure out how get back up swinging.

He straightened up and walked back into camp, sitting down by the fire to help Jim with breakfast.

"Sleep alright?" Jim asked him.

"Well as I could," Steve said.

Jim nodded. "I was looking through my stuff last night, trying to figure out what I've got that still works, and I found some digitalin. You ever use any of that?"

Steve considered. "It was one of the ingredients in some of my heart medicine."

Jim nodded again. "Yeah. I gave you a little bit of it last night while you were out, and if we're in a tight spot, I should be able to use it to help with the arrhythmia, but I'd prefer to avoid it if we could. Too much of the stuff could make you sick, and the line between just enough and too much is very thin. Without magic to make sure I was getting it right, it'd be tricky. Here, flip that piece of toast over."

Steve did, suspecting he knew what Jim was leading up to. "Are you trying to build up to saying that instead of messing around with medicine, we should all walk really slow today so that I don't pass out again?"

Jim looked a little embarrassed, but shot him a smile. "Yeah. Look, Steve, I don't want to sound like we're all just feeling sorry for you, and, you know, 'oh, poor Steve, he can't keep up with the rest of us' or anything like that. If this same thing had happened to any one of the rest of us, you know," he said, pulling the big spoon out of the oatmeal and pointing it at Steve for emphasis. "That you'd be making the same call. This is just the team looking out for each other. Remember when I got hit in the leg and you carried me around Schmidt's house for, like, six hours? Same kind of deal. We do it all the time, and I have yet to see anyone get mad about it."

Steve blushed a little bit. It was a lot easier to make the concessions than to be the one they were being made for, but he knew Jim was right.

"Besides," Jim continued casually, stirring the oatmeal. "We're all down a bunch of gear, got no magic, no idea of what's out there or what the terrain's like…Going slow is just good sense."

Steve smiled at that. "Yeah, I guess so."

When breakfast was ready, they sat around and talked for a while, discussing this whole no-magic situation now that their heads were a little clearer. Things that cancelled out magic were relatively rare, but not unheard of. Like Jim had said the night before, he'd never heard of anything that actually _destroyed_ magic. He and Dugan both seemed hopeful that their magic would return once they got off the island, though they weren't quite sure how fast that would happen, or if it would do it on its own. They also—though this part of the conversation was danced around a little more awkwardly—weren't entirely sure what that meant for Steve. His magic and the serum and everything was just such a special case. Hopefully, it would come back with everything else. Hopefully. The more that word got tossed around, though, the harder Steve found it was to latch on to it, so he was immensely glad when the topic changed to what they were going to do between now and getting off the island.

He was only half-listening, focusing on tamping down the panic that kept surging up whenever he thought about his magic _not_ getting fixed, and looked up when he realized everyone had stopped talking. "What?" he asked, wondering why everyone was looking at him.

"I said, what do you think we should do?" Monty asked.

"Why are you asking me?"

Monty's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Because it's sort of your job," he said. "You know, being the Captain and all." Monty's voice didn't contain the slightest trace of sarcasm or pity, but something sharp twisted in Steve's gut and his eyes darted over to Dugan. Had he…He hadn't told everyone about last night, had he?

Dugan looked up from his oatmeal, caught Steve's eye and knew what he was asking, then shook his head. He hadn't said a thing. The knot in Steve's stomach loosened a little bit. He didn't think he would have. Just, how did Monty… He looked back at Monty, who was still looking at him expectantly. Monty still trusted him too. So did the rest of them, the way they were all looking at him like that. He sat up a little straighter. Maybe he _could_ do this.

"Okay," he said, a little nervously. This was just a mission. Just planning for a mission. He did this all the time. "Well, uh, we still haven't found the Hydra guys. With no magic, destroying the base may be off the table, but we can still see what they're up to, and knowing where they are should help keep us from getting snuck up on in the jungle." This statement got several nods of approval, so he must have said the right thing. Emboldened, he cleared his throat and went on. "If this no-magic thing covers the island, then that means they don't have any either. That ought to help us out, since there's probably more of them than there are of us. And we made it more than halfway across the island yesterday, so we should be able to get there with plenty of daylight left today to scope the place out and figure out our next move." If his memory from their briefing was correct, they'd covered enough ground yesterday, they were two miles from the buildings and the dock at the outside. Up and down hills and through jungle, but not that far. Depending on how rocky the walk was, he wanted to say an hour of walking, maybe two if it was a lot of uphill. But that was at their old pace. They were going to be going a lot slower now because of him, and that stung, but he swallowed it down. That was just the way it was. He could deal with it.

They finished eating and broke up camp, which took a little longer without magic than it used to. Particularly the taking down and re-folding of the tents—Gabe was the only one of them whose family had ever done non-magical camping before, so he'd been instrumental in getting them all set up last night, and was currently very annoyed with Monty for not remembering a thing he'd said last night and getting it all, very, very wrong.

"See, Stevie?" Bucky said as they collected all the tent pegs. He was still watching Steve like he was worried about him, but he seemed as encouraged by them all looking to Steve for instruction as Steve had been, if not more. "I hate to say 'I told you so', but…"

Steve snorted. "You love to say 'I told you so'."

Bucky laughed. "That's true. Alright. I told you so."

Steve smiled. Now that the wave of crushing terror and panic was under control, he knew—he hadn't actually doubted it, he'd just been overwhelmed and had forgotten—he knew his friends weren't just going to dump him because he wasn't the big strong hero anymore. He was still embarrassed and worried and scared, but at least he had that.

"Hey, Buck?" he asked, holding open the bag for him to drop the tent pegs into. "When we get back, um, I mean, if I don't…" He was trying to accept the possibility that he might stay small forever. "Do you think I'll still be on the team?"

"Steve, the other guys aren't—"

"I don't mean the other guys," Steve cut him off. "I mean Phillips." He swallowed nervously. "I wasn't allowed to do this stuff before."

Bucky nodded thoughtfully. "Well, Phillips didn't know what you could do before," he finally said. "And if you do end up staying small—and that's a big 'if', Stevie—_if_ you end up staying little, then, yeah, it'll change how we do some stuff. But if Phillips tries to boot you out, he's going to have six _very_ pissed off Howling Commandos to deal with, and I think he's smarter than that."

Steve blushed a little, but he nodded. He didn't know that it would be quite as easy as all that, but he wouldn't want to be the one to cross the rest of the team. Knowing they all had his back made the fear just a little bit easier to swallow.

They got going and set off towards the Hydra outpost, following the compass that Steve realized with a pang no longer pointed wherever you needed it to. It just pointed north now.

An upside, Steve supposed, to being small and physically unfit again, was that once they started walking, he didn't have a lot of time to devote to worrying. In rough terrain like this, breathing and regulating his pace and watching his footing was taking up most of his brain capacity, and he was alright with that.

They stopped after about half an hour to sit down and get some water, and Steve was the only one who looked anywhere close to tired, but he tried not to think about that. They set off again, a nice, steady, slow pace that Steve could manage, but between climbing up and over logs and boulders, fighting back giant tree branches that smacked him in the face if he didn't shove them out of the way, and balancing a backpack full of equipment while constantly going either up or down hill (seriously, was there _any_ flat ground on this island?), he was still red-faced and panting by the time they took their next break thirty minutes later. Jim came over and checked on his pulse and his breathing and decided he was alright, though he didn't leave until he watched him drink at least half of his canteen's worth of water. The third break came after another half-hour, and Steve was red-faced from more than just exertion this time.

"It's gonna take us forever to go two miles at this rate," he sighed after taking a pull from his inhaler. He knew they needed to go slow because of him, but this was getting ridiculous.

"So, we'll be nice and well-rested when we get there," Bucky said.

"Bucky," Steve groaned.

"Steve," Bucky said calmly. "Nobody is judging you for this."

"I know," he sighed. He leaned forward into his hands. "This is just so embarrassing," he muttered from behind his fingers.

He felt Bucky's arm come to rest on his back. "I know," Bucky said. "But there's no shame in asking for help when you need it. And there isn't any in accepting it even when you haven't asked for it, either," he said. "Don't remember who told me that."

"Shut up," Steve complained, knowing that Bucky knew full well who he was quoting, but not really having much to say beyond that. It was hard to argue when someone started throwing your own words at you.

They rested a little longer before getting back on the move. "Um," Steve started hesitantly.

"Yeah?" Bucky replied, looking back at him. "You need to sit a little while longer?"

"No." Steve sighed. He looked down, feeling his cheeks flush. No. He could ask for help. "I'm okay to get moving again, I just…The shield is getting really heavy." He thought he might be able to keep up a better pace without it on his back.

Bucky shot him an understanding smile and took it off of his back, fastening it to the outside of his own backpack. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Steve nodded. "Thanks."

He managed to make it the next thirty minutes, but he could tell they were slowing down even more, and he just couldn't make himself go any faster. He needed another pull from the inhaler when they stopped, and he hoped there was enough left in the thing to last until he got off the island. Jim came and checked on his heart again, and though he said Steve should be alright, he went back to his bag and started digging through it, and Steve could hear him muttering about digitalin.

They'd only been walking again for fifteen minutes when Steve reached out and tapped Bucky's arm. "I think I need to stop," he rasped, and he was feeling kind of shaky, but if the look on Bucky's face was anything to go by, he was about to keel over.

"Guys, let's take a break!" Bucky called, and Steve closed his eyes and swallowed down the shame of knowing how much trouble he was causing, even as he sank down to the ground in relief. They didn't mind. No one was going to get mad at him. Maybe if he told himself that enough, he'd really believe it.

"Okay, Stevie, look at me. Look at me, okay?" Bucky said, and Steve opened his eyes again. Concern was etched into every line of his best friend's face. "What's wrong?"

Steve waved a hand, dismissing what he knew was fear for his heart or his lungs—this hiking, easy as they were taking it, was just more exertion than this little body had been built to handle all at once. " 'm just so tired," he said, and yeah, his lungs were heaving and his heart was going a little faster than it should, but it wasn't anywhere dangerous. Not yet. It had taken a little while there at the beginning, but he was familiar with the rhythms and limits of this body again, and if he stopped now, he could avoid those dangers he knew were looming just over the horizon. It was embarrassing and felt weak and pathetic, but it was better than passing out. Although, they'd probably cover more ground if he was unconscious and someone was carrying him.

Bucky looked him over carefully, gauging his breathing and his color, then nodded. "Okay." He pulled a canteen off his back. "You want some water?"

Steve accepted the canteen. "How much further do we have to go?"

"We're more than halfway there," Jim said, approaching and kneeling down beside him to check his pulse. "We decided to go ahead and get set up for lunch."

Steve pulled his dad's watch out of his pocket and checked it. "It's eleven thirty."

Jim shrugged. "So, we'll eat a little early, take a good break, and figure out our next move. Here, you eat this while we're setting up," he said, pulling an apple out of his pocket.

Steve took the fruit. The sugar might help the way his hands were shaking. "Hey, if we're more than halfway, we should send Jacques on to scout up ahead." They ought to start running into lookouts and alarms soon, and it would be good to know what to look out for.

Jim nodded and went to pass the message on to Jacques. Bucky sat down next to Steve. Steve let out a frustrated huff of air, then took a bite of the apple. "We've been walking three hours and we've gone, like a mile," he grumbled.

"Closer to a mile and a half, actually," Bucky corrected him.

Steve shrugged. "Yeah, that's _so_ much farther."

"Steve, don't—"

"Don't?" Steve interrupted. "Don't what? Don't point out how much I'm slowing this whole thing down? Don't point out how very little we have accomplished because of me? Don't point out how much more work it's causing everyone just because I exist?"

"Yes," Bucky said a little curtly. "Don't do that." He sighed and shook his head. "Look, Steve, I know how much you hate people thinking you can't do stuff and feeling sorry for you. But none of that is what this is. Yes, we're running this mission differently than we usually would, and yes, a lot of that has to do with the state you are currently in. But none of that's pity. None of that's annoyance. It's your friends looking out for you because they care about you."

Steve felt his cheeks flushing again. "I know," he said, all the fire gone out of his voice. "I know. I'm sorry, I keep…" Every time he thought he had a handle on this, something came out of left field and swung him back into messed-up again. He shot Bucky an embarrassed half-smile. "I'm not trying to be a jerk."

"I know," Bucky said, smiling back down at him. It was taking some getting used to, looking up at everyone again. "I'm not taking any of it personally. I'm just trying to get it through that thick skull of yours…" He paused here to rap his knuckles on Steve's head. "That we're all here and it's okay to lean on us."

Steve nodded. "I'm trying real hard to remember that," he said.

"That's all I'm asking," Bucky replied, smiling wider and nudging Steve with his elbow.

Steve finished his apple and threw the core into a nearby bush, where it hit something under the leaves with a hollow-sounding _clonk_. He frowned. That was a weird noise. Bucky must have thought so too, because he pushed himself onto his knees and leaned forward, pulling back the large leaves to see what it had hit. "Aw, crap," he muttered.

"What?" Steve asked.

Bucky stood up and shoved the front half of the bush out of the way. Steve's apple core had bounced off another skull, but this one wasn't alone. There were at least three of them lying in a tangle of little roots and other assorted bones. One of them was still wearing a Hydra helmet, only one leg of the octopus emblem still visible on the weathered leather covering.

"Crap," Steve agreed.

* * *

_There have been some more pressing matters to attend to, but there ARE still Hydra guys on the island. Dead ones, anyway. Still a lot left to figure out._

_Digitalin is a real drug used in heart medicine-one you see crop up frequently in Agatha Christie novels as a possibility for an 'accidental' death, since the line between too much and enough is very thin, hence Jim's caution._

_See you Monday!_


	77. The Long Journey Home

_In all the kerfluffle about losing magic and Steve being small, we kind of forgot about the island's other problem. But, yes. Hydra may or may not be around. There's certainly some skeletons that warrant further investigation. Let's see how that goes.  
_

* * *

"You know, what with everything else going on, I'd forgotten about these guys," Jim said, nodding down at the skulls under the bush. After Bucky and Steve had found them, Bucky had let the rest of the guys know, and now they were all, minus Jacques, standing in a semi-circle staring at them.

"That helmet does beg the question, though," Dugan said, pointing at the one in the remains of the Hydra uniform. "Did the rest of them just lose their gear, or are we looking at more than just Hydra soldiers here?"

"Well," Steve mused. "We know no one lives on the island." Intel had told them that much, and they had yet to see a trace that would suggest anywhere but that one little cluster of buildings was inhabited. "And the S.S.R. hasn't hit here before, so it's not any of our guys that they got into it with." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If they're not all Hydra, then maybe…maybe they're people Hydra brought here."

"Why would they do that?" Gabe wondered.

Steve shrugged. "I don't know. Could be prisoners or something. You know, like people they wanted out of the way, but still wanted something out of."

"Well," Bucky agreed. "This is sure out of the way. Not a bad spot for a political prison. If anyone got out, it's not like they were gonna swim a hundred miles to the next island."

"They've been dead for a while, though," Monty said. "Especially with nothing big eating at them. It takes a bit to end up as bones like this."

"Yeah, but not, like, super long or anything," Jim countered. "Out in the elements, all this moisture in the air…I mean, a few months at least, sure, but I don't think we're talking years."

"No," Monty agreed. "There would be more decay then."

"You think they tripped the no-magic doohickey in the ruins?" Gabe asked. "It was off when we got here, so maybe it resets every now and then."

"Probably," Dugan agreed. "But that wouldn't kill them."

"I think this is what killed them," Steve said. He'd moved closer to the bones and had been nudging some of the roots out of the way with his foot. A piece of rebar was jutting out between the ribs of one of the skeletons. "And I think this guy…" There was a fourth, partial skull farther back in the foliage. "Got his head smashed in."

"I'd say that supports your prisoner theory, Cap," Jim send, leaning in for a closer look. "Maybe when the magic tripped, whoever they had locked up got out. Fight could have gotten ugly real quick."

"You think they're all dead?" Bucky wondered. They hadn't seen anyone yet, but that didn't mean no one was there.

They returned to preparing lunch, all a little more on the alert. Steve was sitting on a fallen log, poking pensive holes in the dirt with a stick. Bucky was glad he had something to occupy his mind, but he really could have done without another mystery—especially since they hadn't solved the first one yet.

Jacques reappeared just as the food was ready. They were a little closer to the buildings than they'd thought, which was good news. Jacques' report was a little less encouraging, though. The building compound was empty, most of it in various states of disrepair. A fight had definitely happened, and there were bodies, but not enough in comparison to the amount of space in the compound. There did seem to be a series of cells, which backed up Steve's prison theory further. One corner of the compound was a little cleaner than the rest, possibly lived in, though Jacques hadn't seen anyone around.

"So, there are either a lot more bodies we haven't found, or someone else alive, somewhere on this island," Steve said.

"If there is someone else around, I'm a bit concerned that they've not left," Monty said. "I mean, if I was Hydra, and my prisoners got out and tried to murder me, I would go home."

"Maybe they couldn't leave," Bucky said. "If they tripped the thing in the ruins, they wouldn't've had magic for a little while. However long it lasts. They couldn't apparate, and we didn't see any boats on the dock or anything." At some point before the team's arrival, however, magic had returned to the island, so they could have apparated out after that—why they didn't was worrying him a little.

"Or maybe whoever's alive is someone who was locked up," Jim suggested. "They wouldn't have wands and stuff to leave with."

Gabe, who had been rapidly translating the discussion into French for Jacques, looked up. "Anybody have any paper? Jacques thinks he can draw us a map of the compound." The only paper they had was the map of the island, so Jacques flipped it over and set to work with a stick of charcoal.

"So, first thing we need to do is check out the compound," Steve said. Jacques hadn't been able to look into each building in detail in the interests of time and safety, but more of them could do a thorough search without getting jumped. "We need to figure out who else is left on this island. It may take us a little while to figure out how to get off, and I don't like the idea of someone running around here who might feel like killing us."

Jacques finished with the map, and they gathered around to study it. Bucky couldn't help smiling a little as Steve broke it up into a search grid, deciding on the safest points of entry and what they should be looking out for. This was hard on all of them, losing their magic, but he couldn't imagine how much harder it was for Steve, losing everything else on top of that. He was still the Captain, though, and everyone was acting like it—Bucky had known the other guys wouldn't lose faith in Steve just because he was tiny again, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. And their confidence was helping Steve find his again—he was making plans and being the leader just like he always did, and Bucky was proud of him.

By the time they finished eating and planning, they'd had a good, long break, and Steve looked like he'd be able to get going again without any trouble. He was getting his confidence back, but Bucky knew it wavered every time his health got in the way. Steve had been right that if he'd been his normal size, they would have hit the Hydra compound a couple hours ago. He hated feeling like he was a burden to anybody, and even though no one else thought of him that way, Bucky knew that the fact they had to keep slowing down and reconfiguring things on his behalf made him feel like he was. If Steve _was_ stuck like this now…Bucky sighed. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that none of them would be kicking Steve off the team, but they would have to change up the way they operated. Significantly. Steve could still lead and plan and strategize, but he couldn't be out in the field as much, and he would probably see that change in role as pity, relegating him to an add-on because they felt sorry for him.

Bucky forced himself not to think about that right now. Right now, there was a mission. He could worry later.

Steve had them split into two teams as they neared the compound—splitting up would cover more ground faster, and bigger teams kept their odds of being attacked smaller. Gabe needed to stay with Jacques since he could translate for him faster than anyone else could. Dugan and Jim were split one to each team—they couldn't do magic, but they could analyze any evidence of it they came across. They sent Monty with Gabe and Jacques since his French was the second-best, and if they got in a tight spot, communication would need to happen quickly. Dugan went with them—Steve hadn't liked to admit it, but he thought that he should probably stick close to Jim, and Bucky was sticking with Steve.

Their radios still worked—the non-magical ones—and even though the teams were supposed to stay within shouting distance of each other, they were doing regular check-ins too. The compound itself wasn't particularly large—fourteen buildings of varying sizes, most no bigger than an average house. The first two that Bucky, Steve and Jim inspected seemed to be administrative, with very little left worth looking at.

The third was much larger and offered more to investigate. It contained some of the cells Jacques had mentioned, backing up Steve's theory that this had been some kind of prison.

"Oh, yeah," Jim said, studying the walls. "These cells definitely weren't built with bars across the front. When the magic died, whatever shielding there was across the front of here would've just…" He snapped his fingers.

"So, that explains a lot," Bucky said. "Seems kind of stupid, though. Wouldn't you want at least a door or something as a backup?"

"Well, that's why you're not Hydra," Jim said. "You're a lot smarter than them."

"More dead guys over here," Steve said from the other side of a wall. They followed his voice and found another set of bodies. Protected from the elements, these still had their clothes and even some of their skin still clinging to the bones. They did not smell great. The clothes confirmed that, yes, there had been both Hydra soldiers and prisoners fighting. At the rate they kept finding bodies, it was starting to look like nobody won.

"Guys, we got a jackpot over here," Gabe's voice came through the radio. "Little admin building at the top of the hill. We found a log book one of the Hydra commanders kept. It _was_ a prison here—been here ten years, but eight months ago, they tripped the thing in the ruins. Magic went poof, the prisoners revolted, but it looks like Hydra held onto the base for a little while. They kept getting hit by the prisoners who escaped coming back and raiding the place, though."

"Do we know how long it took for the magic to come back to the island?" Steve wondered.

"Not yet," Gabe replied. "I'm just hitting highlights. Gimme a little more time."

"Okay, you keep at that," Steve said. "We've found some more bodies over here, but not much else."

They continued their search, moving on to the next building. Living quarters for the guards, it looked like, though the place had been ransacked within an inch of its life. "I guess if most of the prisoners ran off into the woods, they'd keep coming back and raiding the place for supplies," Bucky mused. Their team was doing alright camping out there, but they'd brought supplies and food. They hadn't seen any animals larger than birds and lizards, so hunting wouldn't have been much of an option. And it was summer down on this side of the globe right now, but eight months ago would have been coming onto winter, and they'd need warmer clothes and blankets. There were still signs that someone had been here recently, though—muddy footprints on the floor, sooty stains from a fire. No one was living here, but people kept coming back.

"What sort of prisoners to do you think they kept here?" Jim wondered, peering into a broken footlocker. "I mean, ideally, if we ran into any of them, they should be on our side, right? Enemy of my enemy and all that."

"In theory," Steve agreed. "Gotta be pretty dangerous, though, to ship 'em all the way out here."

"And depending how long they were incarcerated," Bucky added. "They may be a little on the unhinged side." He knew too well how well Hydra could mess with your head, and he'd been a prisoner for three weeks. How broken would someone be after years in their hands? Steve shot him a sympathetic look.

They headed back to the main path in the middle, meeting up with the other team. Gabe had taken the logbook and a couple of other notebooks he'd found and tucked them into the bag with his radio equipment. Other than those books, both groups were turning up with a whole lot of nothing. They'd both been finding bodies, and sure, there were probably more out in the jungle they hadn't found, but there should have been more for a place this size.

"Does anyone else feel like we're being watched?" Monty asked.

"Kind of have been since we landed, to be honest," Jim replied.

A rumbling sound had them all looking skyward. The sun had yet to be visible through the mist the entire time they'd been here, but it was significantly darker now, and getting cooler. "Sounds like thunder," Gabe said. "We wanna camp out in one of the buildings?"

Steve shot a look at Dugan, then shook his head. "I don't think so. People keep coming back here, and there's nothing left to steal. If this is where whoever is still alive comes for shelter, I'd rather not be here with them."

"If we want out of the rain, we could head for the side of the mountain over there," Dugan said. "Should be able to find an overhang or something to camp out under."

They all agreed and started walking that way, but they hadn't made it more than halfway down the path when the hairs on the back of Bucky's neck stood up. "Someone's here," he said, sliding his hand to his belt for his gun.

"Yep," Dugan said quietly, reaching for his own weapon. Everyone was pulling weapons into easy reach, clicking off the safety.

Bucky looked over at Steve, who swallowed nervously, tightening his grip on his pistol. Steve so rarely used a gun, and Tiny Steve had never touched one. It was going to be unfamiliar and awkward in his hand, no matter that he knew how to use it. "Take your shield back, Steve," he whispered, sliding it down his arm. He couldn't throw it, but he could hide behind it.

Steve slipped the shield onto his own arm, looking marginally less nervous. They were all scared though—the last fight any of them had been in without some kind of magic would have been a schoolyard brawl, and it had been years since they'd gotten into anything like that. Not to mention the threat of death had never been an issue then.

Everything stayed quiet for just a few seconds more, uneasy anticipation hanging heavy in the air, then the sharp snap of a bullet shattered the silence. From behind one of the buildings came a swarm of people, maybe fifteen all together, and they didn't look like they were wearing Hydra uniforms, but they were brandishing guns and other weapons and didn't look like they were in the mood for a discussion about how they should all be on the same side.

Bucky felt woefully unprepared for a battle without his wand, but at least he had his rifle, and it felt familiar and reassuring in his hand. He was shooting to wound, not to kill, and it looked like the other guys were doing the same. If these guys _were_ the former prisoners they looked like, then they didn't _want_ to kill them—it would be awfully hard to make friends later if they did.

Their opponents had no such qualms, though, and Bucky found himself sorely missing magical shields and protective charms. He kept shooting glances at Steve, who was remaining behind his shield and firing his gun, and he looked like he was doing alright. Then the air exploded into chaos as another swarm of people appeared from behind a different building. And _there_ were all the Hydra guys.

The battle had become too close at this point for Bucky's rifle to be much use, though he could still flip it around and whack people in the face with the less-lethal end. People were punching, kicking and brawling, he saw several knives flashing, and was that a bayonet? There were lots of make-shift weapons too—scrap pieces of metal and sharpened sticks and one guy had something with rocks and rope that he was swinging around. Looked like everyone had had time to adapt to the lack of magic.

It was harder to see what was going on with everyone this close, but Bucky's eyes kept darting to where he had last seen Steve. He growled in frustration when he found him—you could take the serum out of the little punk, but that idiotic disregard for his own safety hadn't gone anywhere. He was actually in the fight now, out from behind his shield and brawling like he'd forgotten he didn't have two hundred pounds of muscle to back up his punches anymore. Not that he'd fought any differently last time he was little, but still…

"Steve, get back!" he yelled, but Steve either didn't hear him or ignored him. He had a knife out now, and it finally looked like he was realizing punching people wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he took a page out of Jacques' book, keeping low to the ground and rolling and slashing. That seemed to be working out for him a little better.

While neither of the two sides seemed to be out for the Howlies in particular, they sure didn't seem to mind trying to take them out too. They were fighting on two fronts here, and it was way more people than they could take out. If all the other two sides wanted was each other, then they should cut and run and let them at one another.

Steve was suddenly back by Bucky's side, breathing hard, his knife blade glistening with blood. "We need to get out of here," he said. He gestured for Bucky to call out the retreat—he didn't have the lung capacity anymore to get the volume he needed for that.

"Howling Commandos fall back!" Bucky yelled. They didn't exactly have a base to fall back to, but as long as they got out of here in the same direction…

Everyone started pulling out, fighting their way to the edge of the crowd. Bucky looked around for Steve, fear churning in his gut when he found him, his little feet dangling a good two feet off the ground and a former Hydra prisoner's hands wrapped around his neck. Bucky yelled and started fighting his way over—his handgun was out of ammo, but he slammed the butt of his rifle into one guy's face and scooped up Steve's fallen shield, smashing it into the head of another. Steve swung out with the knife he'd managed to hold on to, slashing the forearms of the man who was holding him and making him cry out and let go in surprise. Steve dropped to the ground in a graceless heap, looking a little blue in the face and gasping for air, but the guy who'd dropped him was quick to recover and kicked him roughly in the stomach before he had time to roll out of the way.

Bucky saw red for a minute, and he never remembered quite what exactly he did; there was just an impression of vibranium meeting bone and his boots meeting flesh. He grabbed Steve's hand and hauled him to his feet and they were running, between the buildings and across the empty space between them and the cover of the jungle. He heard the crack of gunfire and angry voices too close behind them for comfort, and he knew they weren't going to get away at this speed. "Sorry, Stevie," he muttered, and he let go of Steve's hand, looped his arm under Steve's armpits and across his chest instead, and hoisted him off the ground, putting on a burst of speed and racing for the trees. It was hardly the most dignified escape, but at least Steve would be alive enough to be embarrassed about it later.

They hit the treeline and Bucky only slowed down enough to avoid running into anything, still wanting to put some good distance between them and the fight. He ran for several minutes until he only heard silence behind him, stopping at last by the trunk of a giant tree. He set Steve down and his friend leaned back against the tree, sinking shakily to the ground and breathing hard.

"Tell me you managed to hold on to the inhaler," Bucky panted. Steve nodded, already taking it out of his pocket and taking a long pull from it, then another. Bucky dropped down heavily beside him, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. "Let me take a look at you," he said, still trying to catch his breath. Steve wasn't blue anymore, but that didn't mean he was okay.

There were hand-shaped bruises already forming around his neck, and Bucky had to close his eyes for a minute and swallow down the rage that boiled up at the sight of them. Steve sounded like he was breathing alright, but Bucky made a note to keep a closer eye on that. The scrapes from his fall down the hill were oozing blood again, and he was scratched and scraped and bruised and… "Oh, my gosh, Steve, what happened?!" he exclaimed. The right side of Steve's shirt was wet with blood.

Steve looked down at his side curiously, lifting up his arm to see it better, then back up at Bucky. "It's not mine," he said. He'd been trying to look Bucky over for injuries too after he got his breath back, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously as they landed on Bucky's arm. "I think it's yours."

"What?" Bucky asked.

Steve shifted and grabbed the arm Bucky had been carrying him with. The sleeve was torn and Bucky had assumed it was just dirty, but Steve rolled it back carefully, and, oh, okay, that was blood, wasn't it? Kind of a lot of it. "What?" Bucky said again. How had _that_ happened?

"That's a lot of blood," Steve said unhappily. "Here, hold it up over your head for a minute until I find something to clean it with," he said, raising Bucky's injured arm up. "What happened?"

"Dunno," Bucky said. "Guess somebody cut me."

"Somebody cut you," Steve muttered to himself, shaking his head as he busied himself with digging through Bucky's bag. "That's helpful, Buck, thanks."

Bucky shrugged. He didn't know how it had happened, and he was starting to think he'd maybe lost enough blood that it was something to worry about, because that would explain the dizziness and why he suddenly felt so tired. "Ow!" he hissed as something cold started rubbing at his arm.

"Sorry," Steve said, but he didn't stop with the wet cloth he was cleaning Bucky's arm with. "Holy cow, Buck, that's deep," he muttered. Bucky looked down to where Steve was working, then swallowed and looked up again. That _was_ deep. "I think Jim's gonna have to stitch this up," Steve said. "Hopefully this'll hold it until we find him."

Something soft and warm pressed against the wound and Bucky looked down again. "Is that my sock?" he asked. Something oddly clean and white was laying across his arm. Steve was tying it down with little strips of fabric he'd cut off of something.

"Yeah," Steve said, not looking up from his work. "I needed something clean, so I used one of your spare ones. There," he declared, tightening the last knot and making Bucky grunt at the pressure. "That ought to hold it."

"Thanks," Bucky said. He still felt a little light-headed, but he shook his head and forced himself back into the moment. They weren't safe yet.

"You're welcome," Steve replied. "Let's get you up." Bucky wobbled a little, but they got him to his feet, and Steve got under his good arm to support him. "I guess if I have to be little now, at least I'm a good height to make a decent crutch," he said with a little smile, and that got a chuckle out of Bucky.

They checked in over the radio with the other guys and got moving, trying to regroup before the storm hit. They decided to stick with Dugan's plan of heading for the side of the mountain and looking for shelter there.

Fortunately, by the time Bucky and Steve got to the mountain, Gabe, Jacques and Jim were already there, and they'd found a little crevice in the rocks that led back into a fair-sized cave. It took both Steve and Jim to get Bucky inside it—his light-headedness had only gotten worse as they'd gotten closer to the mountain, and he was swaying on his feet now. They only had one non-magical lantern right now, but Gabe had already gotten it lit. Jim let out a low whistle as he inspected Bucky's arm, peeling away the now scarlet-colored sock covering the cut.

"Oh, yeah," he mused, turning away and rifling through his bag. "That's gonna need stitches. A lot."

"He'll be okay, though, right?" Steve asked.

Jim nodded, threading a curved little needle. "Yeah. He lost a lot of blood, though. Go find a canteen, get him some water." He laid a hand on Bucky's good arm and Bucky blinked open eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed. "This is gonna hurt, Sarge," he said apologetically. "A lot. I've got nothing to numb it with. You wanna pass out, I'd…Well, I'd recommend that, actually. Sorry."

Bucky nodded wearily. "Keep an eye on Steve's breathing, huh? Some bad bruises on his neck."

"I will," Jim promised. "Here we go."

Bucky just managed to swallow down a scream as something cold and sterile-smelling splashed over his arm. Something sharp was piercing through the burning skin, tugging on it painfully, and Bucky felt little hands turning his head and holding him up as he vomited onto the rocky floor. The burning and piercing and tugging kept going, and it was just getting worse, and Jim was right, passing out did sound like a good idea…

* * *

Steve shifted and tried not to kick Jim in the leg as he tried to find a more comfortable position on the rocky floor. It had been a hell of a night.

Jim had gotten Bucky's arm stitched up as soon as he and Steve had arrived at the cave. Bucky had gotten sick, no doubt from all the blood he'd lost, and then passed out for a while. Jim had finished stitching the wound, then bandaged it up with Bucky's other spare sock acting as a gauze pad and some of the clean bandages from Jim's meager supply holding it in place.

Jim had turned his attention to Steve's throat then, examining the bruises and listening carefully to him breathe. Steve could tell they were swelling up and constricting his airway a little, and Jim hadn't sounded too happy with what he'd heard, so he'd dunked a couple of socks into the stream running through the back of the cave, wrapped the freezing strips of material around Steve's neck and ordered him to sit there and keep his neck straight and not do anything else. He'd also looked the rest of him over and, after deciding the foot-shaped bruise on his stomach wasn't hiding any internal bleeding, declared him well enough, though he'd pulled out some more of that ointment for the numerous cuts Steve had accumulated during the fight.

He'd worked on Gabe then, who'd needed some smaller sets of stitches and a couple of fingers set and splinted, and by the time he was done with that, Jacques had shown back up from where he'd gone to help Dugan and Monty find the cave. He'd also brought back the rest of their gear that they'd set down before going into the compound, which was good. It meant they had things like food and more lanterns and sleeping bags again.

Dugan and Monty had both needed medical attention as well. Nothing too severe, which was good, since Jim's non-magical medical supplies had been fairly limited to begin with. Jim had then proceeded to uncover a cut in his own leg that he'd bandaged up earlier and stitch it back together, and Steve had wanted to get after him for fixing them all up while he was bleeding too, but apparently, it hadn't been bad enough to warrant making the rest of them wait, and at that point it was raining so hard Steve could have yelled at him and he wouldn't have heard it anyway.

When the storm had hit, Steve had been immensely glad they'd found this place. Their tents would be in pieces if they'd tried camping in this, and he could see why the Hydra guys and their former prisoners would fight over a place to get out of it. They'd risked a small fire to cook dinner—little chance of anyone being outside to see it. They hadn't talked while they ate—the roar of the rain made conversation impossible. As soon as they were done, they went to sleep. Dugan and Jacques were on security, and Steve felt bad that he wasn't contributing to that for the second night in a row, but after the day's hiking and fighting, once he'd sat down, he'd had trouble staying awake long enough to eat.

The make-shift cold compresses had done their work on his throat and the swelling had gone down enough to ease his breathing, though Jim had insisted on sleeping next to him so he could keep an ear on it anyway. Steve had laid down to sleep with his back to Bucky's, Jim next to him, and Gabe was on Jim's other side. Monty and Dugan were over there somewhere too—Jacques had first watch. They hadn't wanted to leave the fire going all night, so they were all huddled as close together as they could get—it was cold in the cave. They'd unzipped two of the sleeping bags, then zipped them to one another to make something warmer and slightly softer to lie on, then done the same with three more to go over the top of them all. It kind of worked—that is, it covered them all well enough and kept their body heat in, but it was still chilly. Steve had remembered nights where they'd all piled around him, joking about him being the team furnace, and he'd swallowed down a lump in his throat at the thought of one more thing he wasn't good for anymore. Then he'd fallen asleep.

He woke up sometime when it was still dark because there was a rock jabbing into one of the bruises on his back, and he spent a while trying to shift off of it without kicking anyone and waking them up. By the time he'd gotten that done, his body was still exhausted, but his brain had woken up and didn't want to go back to sleep yet. So he lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of the rain that was loud enough to drown out even Dugan's snoring.

All day yesterday, as they'd hiked and crossed the island and gone slow and taken a lot of breaks on his behalf, all day he'd been wrestling with the situation he was in. He knew that if it had been someone else, say, Dugan had broken his leg, then they would have been doing the same thing and he wouldn't have minded at all. So why did he think the rest of them minded when it was him? He knew they didn't, but it was just hard to remember that in the middle of it all. Every time he got embarrassed about slowing them down and making them take all this trouble, he tried to remind himself that his value to the team—both as the captain and as their friend—hadn't changed. At the same time, though, hadn't it changed a little? Not his value as a person, but what he was able to contribute. That had some value too, didn't it? And that was all gone.

Like in the fight that afternoon. Even without magic, if he'd still been the size he should have been, he would have been able to cause more damage than just slashing at a few ankles, and he never would have gotten picked up and nearly choked to death. Maybe he would have been able to turn the tide enough so they wouldn't've had to retreat, and maybe not, but he still should have been able to call the retreat himself and run for cover on his own two legs. Bucky had saved both of their lives, but the humiliation of being picked up and tucked up under his arm like a rag doll still stung.

He knew no one had any intention of kicking him off the team, and while he was grateful for that, well, what could he actually _do_ anymore? Help them make plans and then just hang back at school while the rest of them carried them out? If he was stuck like this, there was no way he would be out on the field. He couldn't fight and his magic sucked and between his heart and his asthma he'd be more hindrance than help. He'd be the Captain in name only, and this, his job, his mission, everything he did…He would have lost that.

Tears stung sharply behind his eyes again, but he refused to let them fall. Yes, his life was falling apart, and yes, the noise of the rain would keep anyone from hearing him cry, but he wasn't going to do it anyway. He was tough and he didn't give up, and right now that was all he had left. So he was going to hold on to it.

The next morning dawned cold and foggy, but the rain had slowed down to something less deafening and the sun was up there somewhere, and with a little more sleep and the return of the daylight, Steve was able to rally himself again. He was beat down and broken, but that had never stopped him before, and he had a job to do.

"So, what's our play?" Gabe asked as they ate breakfast, holding his bowl of oatmeal awkwardly between his splinted fingers.

Steve had been thinking about that too when he'd been lying awake last night. "I think we need to go," he said. He hated leaving a mission unfinished (he'd only ever done it once before, after the cave with the sirens), but this wasn't giving up. This was his team outnumbered and outgunned and beat to hell, and he had a responsibility to the mission but he had one to the team too. They were still following him, and it was his job to keep them alive. And right now, getting the hell off this godforsaken island was the best way to do that.

"I don't think this is a fight we can win," he went on. "If we still had magic, I'd say we could pull this off, but a bunch of our gear is useless now, and we can't fix ourselves up like we could before." He looked around the group—bruises had darkened and swollen up overnight, cuts were scabbing over or oozing things, and sprains and sore muscles and joints were making themselves heard even louder than they had been last night. Thankfully, no one had gotten hit with anything life-threatening during the fight, but jumping into another one in the shape they were in was just asking for trouble.

"We need to get the hell off of this island and see about getting our magic back and just…" He waved a hand in the general direction of the Hydra base. "Those guys want to tear each other apart, and at this point, I say leave 'em to it."

"Amen," Dugan agreed. There was a round of emphatic nods from the rest of the group.

"Phillips can send someone else over if he wants to figure out what's going on with them," Steve went on. "I say we wait and see if the rain lets up and start working our way back to the boat."

"At least we know that should still be there," Monty said. "We used a real anchor along with all the spells, so it shouldn't've gone anywhere."

"At least there's that," Bucky muttered, and Steve knew he was thinking that if the non-magic thing had hit the boat, it was going to be a hell of a job rowing the hundred miles to the next island. They'd have to cross that bridge when they got there—not much they could do about it now.

They finished eating and packed up their stuff. The rain didn't stop, but it continued to lessen, and if it was going to stop soon, that would be at least one less thing to worry about. While they waited, Jim used the time to check up on everyone's injuries from last night. Gabe couldn't do a lot with his hand and broken fingers, but they were staying in place, and all the stitches Jim had given everyone were holding. He'd unwrapped the ones on Bucky's arm, discarding the sock that was sticky with blood and other stuff—he was worried about these stitches in particular getting infected since there were so many of them—and he washed the wound with disinfectant one more time, which almost made Bucky pass out again. He found another clean sock to pad it with and wrapped it all back up again. He'd checked the bruises on Steve's neck, and while they were still visible and very, very tender, the swelling had gone down enough that it didn't impede his breathing.

Gabe, meanwhile, had been poring through the journals he'd taken from the base. The notes the Hydra commander had kept were sporadic, especially after the prisoners got out, but Gabe did find mention of the fact that after the magic disappeared that first time, their equipment and wands had been destroyed in the fighting—they hadn't had any way of telling when the magic reappeared.

"Well, that's something," Jim mused, looking up from re-bandaging the stitches on his leg. "It answers the question of why they didn't apparate out once the magic came back."

"Still doesn't tell us how long it took," Monty grumbled.

"If we can get off this rock, it might not matter," Dugan said.

Steve knew everyone was hanging on Dugan's declaration that they should all get their magic back once they got out of range of the thing in the ruins. He was hoping so too, but tried not to think too hard about it, since he wasn't sure if that would include everything he'd lost.

"You okay, Steve?" Bucky asked, sitting down carefully next to him.

"Yeah," Steve replied, welcoming the distraction.

Bucky eyed his neck suspiciously. "You look like hell," he said.

Steve snorted. "You seen a mirror lately?"

Bucky chuckled. "Seriously, though, are you breathing alright and everything?"

Steve nodded. "Jim worked up some cold compresses for me last night after he fixed up your arm. It's still sore," he admitted, gingerly touching one of the bruises on his throat. "But the swelling went down." He nodded at Bucky's arm. "What about you?"

"If I hold it really, really still, it doesn't hurt," Bucky said. "Otherwise, I kind of want to scream."

Steve winced sympathetically. All the painkillers that had been in Jim's bag were magical, and so were currently useless. "We should get you a sling or something," he said. "Maybe that would help when we start moving."

Bucky nodded. "Probably a good idea. Get my spare shirt out of my bag," he said, nodding at the leather satchel. "See if that'll work."

Steve spent a few minutes wrapping and tying the shirt, and Jim came over to help him strap Bucky's arm up to immobilize it. The rain had died off by then, so they picked up their gear and very carefully and warily left the cave. They were heading in the opposite direction of the Hydra base, but who knew who had won the fight last night, and who knew who they would run into in the jungle? Everyone had what weapons they could carry ready. Steve checked his compass to point them off in the right direction, sighing as he did so. Nine miles of picking their way through wet, muddy, rocky terrain that was potentially a hell of a lot more hostile now that they knew there were roaming bands of pissed off soldiers out there somewhere.

It was going to be a long hike.

* * *

Jim groaned as he sank down into the driest-looking patch of mud he could find, closing his eyes and scrubbing his hands down his face. They had been hiking for two days. It had been raining for at least one and a half of those. Every step he took, he was shoving back branches full of wet leaves that smacked him in the face and sent freezing water dripping down his shirt. This whole, stupid island was either slanting up or slanting down, and he was soaked in mud from scaling the hills and sliding or falling down the slopes. His socks were squishing in his water-logged, over-large shoes. The cut in his thigh was killing him, and after three nights of sleeping on the hard ground, he couldn't even tell where he'd been beaten and hurt during that fight—his body was one giant bruise at this point. He was hungry and cold and wet and sore and he didn't think he'd ever been this miserable in his life. Well, maybe at Azzano.

He shoved himself back up before he fell asleep in the mud. They'd found a reasonably clear patch and decided to set up camp for their fourth—and hopefully last—night on the island that Jim had come to hate with the fire of a thousand suns.

"Gimme a hand with the tents?" Dugan asked wearily.

"Coming," Jim sighed. He, Dugan and Jacques had been on tent duty since they left the cave. Gabe couldn't do anything to help put them up with his hand all splinted up like that. Bucky was down an arm, as was Monty after losing his footing in the mud this afternoon and sliding off a ledge—Jim was pretty sure it was broken, but they'd been trying to find a flat place to camp before they lost the daylight and he hadn't had time to look it over properly yet. Steve technically had enough hands to help, but by the time they stopped for the night, he was huffing and panting and turning worrying shades of pale under all that mud, and Jim would rather work a little harder for shelter than have another medical emergency on his hands. Though an extra set of hands would have been nice. He started walking over to Dugan, shoving his medical bag into Steve's arms to keep it out of the mud less gently than he should have. "Here," he snapped. He did feel a little bad when Steve stumbled a few steps back as he pushed the bag at him.

They got the tents up, and the rest of the guys got a fire going for dinner. They were starting to run out of food too. The fact that Steve ate a lot less now helped stretch out their supplies, but, still, no one had planned on being on this stupid rock for this long. It wasn't helping that they kept running into delays—even with the shape they were in, it shouldn't have taken them two days to go eight and a half miles. They'd had to stop several times when the rain got so bad they couldn't see. There had been four detours to go around a couple of enemy camps and a patrol. Of course, there had been those stupid ruins too. None of them had wanted to go through them again—the anti-magic thing seemed dormant now, but who knew what the hell else was in there—but because of the way the mountains rose up around it, they'd had to go way out of the way, had gotten kind of lost and had to backtrack three times, and then they'd had an unfortunate encounter with a stream and a bunch of leeches. Jim hated this island. He hated it.

Although, leeches aside, at least there was water to drink—plenty of little streams ran down from some kind of spring in the middle of the island and out to sea, and they were never too far from one of them. Without magic, there was no way to clean it aside from boiling it, and at this point, Jim wouldn't be surprised if they all had some sort of stomach parasites from the stuff, but it tasted alright and it hadn't gotten them noticeably sick yet, so what else were they going to do?

The lack of magic was still a sore subject, and getting sorer every day. Yeah, they were sure it would come back when they left—maybe not right away—but they had to leave first. Jim hadn't realized just how much they relied on magic. All these injuries that were slowing them down—it was nothing Jim couldn't have fixed with the wave of a wand or one of the potions he could mix up from his bag. All the gear they'd had to leave behind—simple expanding charms would have let them keep it all, and kept what they _did_ hang on to from being so heavy. Setting up camp every night—tents could have been set up and water-proofed with a simple spell, and they'd be warm and dry when they slept. Hell, forget setting up camp, they could have apparated off this freaking island and saved themselves a lot of pain.

It felt different too, like something was wrong inside of him. Jim had always been fairly sensitive to magic—his had shown up before his second birthday, and he'd always been able to feel it, to sense it, even when he wasn't doing it. He couldn't feel it inside himself now, and it felt…kind of hollow. It felt sort of crushing at the same time, like a weight was hovering over his shoulders and pushing on him. The air around him felt dead and barren too, and that was weird. He didn't think he'd ever been anywhere where there was _no_ magic at all humming in the air. Four days now, and it felt just as weird as it did on the first day. It made him feel jittery and nervous, and, even as exhausted as he was, it made it hard to sleep.

When they finished with the tents and dropped down wearily around the fire, he set to examining everybody's injuries, and the lack of magic didn't just make him feel weird, it made him feel kind of useless. He was so used to magical healing, and the rest of the team relied on him for that. He'd had non-magical first aid training, and he was wracking his brains trying to bring it all back, but without the right equipment, he could only do so much. Why hadn't he brought more non-magical meds? It was never likely they would need it, but it was just good sense. Or it should have been. Because everyone was in pain, and there was nothing Jim could do to fix it.

A couple of Gabe's fingers needed resetting—he'd slid down that same ledge Monty had, and while he hadn't broken anything new, he'd landed bad on that hand, and Jim didn't think he'd ever seen him look so white. The stitches on the back of Dugan's head and on Jacques' shoulder were doing alright, so at least that was something. That arm of Monty's was definitely broken. Some sticks from a nearby tree were enough to splint it, though he used up the last of Steve's giant spare shirt that they'd been tearing up for bandage strips. He really hoped nobody broke anything else before they got to the boat tomorrow.

It took a while to unwrap and clean off Bucky's arm. Truth be told, Jim was getting pretty worried about that one. The stitches were holding, and it wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was oozing something yellow and sticky and disgusting. No matter how much Jim cleaned it and wrapped it up, the damp and the mud got into it, and it was getting infected. The skin all around the wound was swollen and warm, and while it had been just his arm this morning, the fever was definitely spreading. He growled to himself as he washed it—this should have been so easy to fix.

"Hey, look in there and see if there's any yarrow," he said to Steve, who was sitting next to Bucky and holding Jim's bag on his lap, keeping it dry. He'd held on to most of his medical gear, even the magical stuff, in the hope that it would all start working again—some of it was custom-made or hard to find, and he was really hoping it wouldn't all be wasted. One of the things he'd kept was yarrow—aside from its magical properties, it worked to reduce fevers too.

"Here," Steve said in a quiet voice that increased the guilt Jim felt for snapping at him earlier.

He accepted the little bag of yellow powder from Steve's outstretched hand. "Thanks. I, uh, sorry about before," he said. He wasn't actually mad that Steve wasn't doing enough—like he knew Steve thought he was. He was just mad at everything, and Steve had been right there, so that's where it landed. He wasn't mad at Steve at all, actually. He was horrified at what had happened to him, worried for his health, and impressed at how well he was holding it together. If that had happened to Jim, he would have been a sobbing mess. But it had been a hell of a few days and his emotions were stretched dangerously thin and he'd let them get the better of him. He shot Steve an apologetic smile. "Long day," he added, and that was the understatement of the century, but it got a smile out of Steve.

He mixed up some tea out of the yarrow, gave some of it to Steve to fight that low-grade fever he'd had since yesterday—no surprise that he was starting to get sick in all of this—and had Bucky drink the rest of it while he finished cleaning the mud and gunk from around his stitches. Aside from being disgusting, that was not a good color.

"This tastes awful, just so you know," Bucky said, downing the last of the tea.

"I know," Jim said, frowning at the wound. "How bad does this hurt?"

Bucky sighed. "A lot," he admitted. Jim knew Bucky, like all the rest of them, really, never liked to admit when things were wrong. But he knew when Jim needed them to be honest too. Injuries going untreated only made more problems for everyone in the long run. "It's bad enough I'm trying not to use my hand, and the whole arm up to the elbow kind of feels like it's on fire."

Steve's eyebrows furrowed worriedly at this admission, and Jim was pretty sure his expression was mirroring Steve's. "I was afraid of that." He sighed deeply. Yes, they would make it to the edge of the island tomorrow (they could have pushed and done it today, but they'd found a flat place to sleep and it's not like they were going to row anywhere after it got dark), and yes, they could get on the boat and get off the island, but he didn't know how long it would take his magic to come back, or how long it would take them to get to the next island. (He was really, _really_ trying not to think about having to row for a hundred miles.) It could potentially be a while yet before Bucky could get help, and this arm was getting worse. He looked up at Bucky apologetically. "I'm going to have to open this up and clean it out."

Bucky blanched a little, but swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay." He nodded again, steeling himself. "Better do it now while it's still light."

Jim had Jacques get another kettle boiling and bring it over. He was hardly in ideal conditions, but he could at least clean his tools and hands. Steve had offered to get the water, but Jim wanted him to keep sitting and not carry any more heavy things. His breathing had just evened out, and he was still pretty pale. Jim checked him over while he waited for the water to boil. He'd been keeping a pretty good handle on his breathing, but he'd been using the inhaler a lot and it was starting to run low. Jim was mostly worried about his heart. He remembered back at school when they were younger, always being somewhat aware of Steve's heart condition—he always took the stairs pretty slow going to classes up in the towers, and he sometimes pulled himself out of ball games to rest for a while. He still _did_ stuff though, and he'd been fairly active, but this was way past the limits of what that little body had been built for. And Jim didn't like that flutter he was feeling.

"Has it been doing this since you sat down?" he asked Steve.

Steve nodded.

"Doing what?" Bucky demanded.

"Has it slowed down at all?" he asked, waving at Bucky to wait.

"A little," Steve said. "Not as much as it should have by now," he admitted, cheeks coloring a little.

Jim nodded. They'd been walking very slowly and taking a lot of breaks—the shape the rest of them were in, the slow pace wasn't just for Steve anymore—but it was still a long day and, just like last night, Steve had been pushed right to the edge of a breaking point. "I think we should try some digitalin."

Steve nodded again and Jim dug back into his bag. A few drops had helped on that first night after he'd passed out, so just a couple ought to help bring things back down. It was such tricky stuff, but such a small amount ought to be alright.

"What is going on?" Bucky asked.

"His heart's taking longer to get back to resting than it should, so I'm giving him this, and he's going to take it easy for the rest of the night, and he'll be fine," Jim said. "You ready?" he asked, nodding at Bucky's arm.

His needle, tweezers and scissors had been sterilized in the boiling water, and Jim scooped some water out in a cup to cool down just enough to clean his hands and dip a cloth into to dab the area around the stitches clean. "Here we go," he said. The scissors snipped carefully at the first stitch and then the next one, creating enough room to slide carefully underneath the rest of them. Very carefully, Jim cut the stitches open. Bucky had his eyes closed, wincing and taking slow, measured breaths.

When all the stitches were cut, he plucked the little bits of string out of the skin. He paused to clean it off again, as blood and more of that yellow stuff was starting to eke out. Very gently, he placed his hands on either side of the gash and gingerly pulled it open, and, yeah, it definitely wasn't healing right, because it shouldn't have come open so easy.

Steve choked back a gagging noise from where he was leaning in to watch. "If you're going to throw up, turn that way," Jim told him, though he had to stop and take a deep breath before going on too. That was…oh, that was gross.

He'd boiled some strips of cloth along with his tools, and he picked one of them up and started cleaning the wound out, wiping away the blood and the pus. He made it farther than he thought he would before Bucky asked him to stop for a minute, then turned around and vomited into the bushes.

Bucky threw up again by the time Jim was done cleaning everything, and Jim was really glad they were doing this before dinner—there wouldn't've been much point in having him eat first just to throw everything up later.

It took the last of his disinfectant to wash it out once it was cleaned up. They didn't have a lot of garlic left with their food, but Jim had Jacques crush it all up into a paste, and once the wound was stitched back together, he spread the garlic over the top of it before bandaging it back up. "Garlic helps kill bacteria," he explained to Steve, who was watching curiously.

"And it'll keep the vampires away," Bucky hissed through gritted teeth. He was white as a sheet and on the verge of passing out—Jim knew that garlic had to burn like hell—but he was hanging in there.

"Almost done, Sarge," Jim assured him, tying the last of the knots on the bandage. "Alright, I know you're almost horizontal anyway, but let's lay the rest of the way down, okay?" He helped Bucky shift until he was down flat, keeping hold of the injured arm and laying it on Bucky's chest. "Just breathe easy, settle a little bit, and I'll get you something to eat in a minute, okay?"

He got up and groaned as his body protested the movement, gathering up his tools and walking over to the fire. Jacques had some more boiling water ready to clean the tools and his hands off. "How is he?" Dugan asked.

Jim sighed. "Stuff that color should _not_ be coming out of a man's arm," he said. "It's as clean as I can get it, and if the fever and the infection will stay contained, he should be in good shape until we can get somewhere to fix it up right." He sighed again as he ladled out a bowl of soup. "I hate this. I hate this _so_ much, I…"

Dugan clapped him on the shoulder. "Yeah," he agreed. "You never really think how much you use magic until you don't have it, you know?" He pulled his useless wand out of his pocket and spun it thoughtfully in his hand. He nodded over in Steve and Bucky's direction. "How's Cap?"

"Hard to say," Jim sighed. He ate some of the soup before going on. "Physically, his heart is worrying me a little, but if he rests tonight and then we have, what, like, only an hour to go tomorrow? He'll be okay. The rest of it, though…" He trailed off and shook his head. Steve Rogers was one of the strongest people Jim knew, and seeing him like this reminded him that that was true no matter what size he was. Tough as he was, though, there was a slump to his shoulders that had never been there before, a haunted look in his eyes when he sat still for too long and drifted off. He was holding it together, which was more than Jim could see anyone else doing, but it was still killing him.

"Do you think he'll get it back?" he asked Dugan, lowering his voice even though no one else was listening.

Dugan didn't answer for a few minutes, focusing on his own soup. "Maybe," he said at last. "If the serum just got turned off, then getting out of here may be all it needs to wake it back up again."

Jim nodded. They'd had this conversation before. "What if it doesn't?" he asked even more quietly. They'd had the conversation, but they always stopped at this question, too afraid to ask it.

Dugan was quiet again for several long minutes. "Then we'll figure something out," he said. He dropped his spoon down into his empty bowl. "We still need him."

"Yeah," Jim said, nodding his agreement. That was certainly true. If Steve stayed little like this, they'd have to switch a hell of a lot of things up, but his insane ability to throw trucks at Nazis had never been what they needed him for. Jim had already been compiling a list in his head of the meds he would need—magical _and_ non-magical—that would keep Steve in better shape out on the field so that if he stayed small, they wouldn't have to leave him behind on future missions. Dugan was right, they'd figure something out.

Jim finished up his soup and ladled out two more bowls, taking them over to where Steve and Bucky were. He helped Bucky back up into a sitting position, shooed Steve over to the side so he would eat his own dinner instead of trying to help Bucky, and held the bowl steady so Bucky could use his good arm to eat.

Everyone dragged themselves to their tents and collapsed, exhausted, into their sleeping bags. Jim hated camping. It was never a thing his family had done, and sleeping on the ground outside was kind of the worst. He was so tired though, so sore and drained, that getting horizontal was all he needed to do and he was out.

They were all slow getting up and going the next morning. Everything hurt, and it was still gray and drizzly and cold. "I hate this island," Jim grunted into the ground when Monty woke him up.

"Well, then, get up so we can get the hell off of it," Monty replied.

Jim sat up. "Good point."

He checked everyone over again before they got moving. Steve's heart and breathing were back to where they should be, Gabe's hand and Monty's broken arm were painful but staying straight, and Bucky's fever had gone down, so that was something, even if he looked like he wanted to scream every time he moved his arm. Jim reworked his sling to bind the arm to his chest to keep it from moving, and they started hiking again.

When they finally broke through the trees, Jim smiled in relief at the sight of the Pacific Ocean stretching out in front of them. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Please tell me the boat is down there," Bucky groaned.

"At this point, I would swim back to England if it would get me off this rock," Gabe said.

The boat, thankfully, was still anchored where they had left it, though the rains had left a few inches of water in the bottom. Jim followed Jacques down the rocky face of the island, and together they hopped onto the boulder nearest the boat and managed to pull it up and turn it enough to dump the water out, although once he got a good grip of the boat, Jim almost dropped it.

"Do you feel that?" he asked Jacques excitedly. Maybe he was going crazy, wishing so desperately for magic that wasn't there anymore that he was starting to imagine things, but…

Jim realized Jacques wouldn't have understood the question, but the grin on his face told him he was feeling the same thing Jim was. "C'est magique," Jacques said gleefully.

The boat was humming with magic, practically shaking with it—or it felt like it anyway, after so many days of feeling nothing. "Ha!" Jim barked triumphantly.

"What?" Steve asked, leaning out and peering down at them.

"The boat still has magic!" Jim called. The thing in the ruins had cancelled out the magic on the island and apparently not an inch further. Three feet out to sea was enough to leave the enchantments on the boat intact. He laughed as he saw Steve's jaw drop and everyone else's faces appear over the side of the rocks. "We're not going to have to row to Más a Tierra!" He pulled out his wand, and, alright, it still wouldn't do anything, but the boat still had magic, and Jim could feel it, which meant he hadn't lost it. Finally, _finally_ something was going right.

It was a job getting the one-armed brigade down the rocks, but they finally all made it into the boat. The charm on the boat worked like a magic carpet—you just needed the right commands to steer it, no spells or anything like that. Jim sat up in the front to steer and Steve sat next to him, perched on top of one of the backpacks, helping him navigate. That compass of his still wasn't working the way it was supposed to, but it still pointed north, so he was able to keep them on course.

The trip only took an hour and a half, but after about ten minutes in, Jim and Steve were the only ones awake. Everyone was hurt and exhausted, and Jim knew that Dugan and Jacques, who were in the best shape out of all of them, had been working security patrols every night and had gotten half as much sleep as the rest of them because of it. He could have done with a nap too, but the fact that they were going home was filling him with excited adrenaline, and there was something about being out in the boat that invigorated him. He'd missed the ocean.

"You know, we used to have a boat," Jim told Steve. Steve looked up from the compass at him, inviting him to go on. "I mean, we lived in Fresno, but dad had grown up in a fishing village, and he loved the water, so every weekend he'd apparate us over to his cousin's place in Monterey and we'd spend a couple days by the beach." He chuckled. "It wasn't until I was, like, nine, that I realized we actually lived three hours away."

Steve laughed.

"Oh, it was great, though," Jim went on. "Dad would take me out fishing in that boat. Always just me and him—it was our special thing, you know?" He swallowed down a little knot of sadness at the thought. He and his dad hadn't gotten to go fishing since he was fourteen. "We'd be out there for hours," he continued. "And we'd talk about stuff, and then we'd bring the fish back and we'd grill everything. Esther and Dad's cousin's kid would have been running around in all the tide pools catching crabs and stuff for us to cook with the fish. We'd sit around and eat and after it got dark, my Grandma would play the kokyū—that's kind of like a big violin. She'd play these old songs, and you could hear the ocean out the window, and…" He trailed off, swallowing down a knot in his throat.

"Do you miss it?" Steve asked softly. Jim hadn't talked about it an awful lot, but the rest of the guys knew they'd had to move back in Fourth Year—it had been that or internment camps.

"Yeah," Jim replied. They'd had to scatter when they moved. Jim's family had gone to Kansas, and his dad's cousin and his family were in Nebraska somewhere. He wasn't sure where his grandma was. They hadn't heard from her in a long time.

A small hand rested on his arm, and he looked over to see Steve's bright blue eyes shining with the sorrowful understanding of what it was like to have your life uprooted when you were young and to lose people you loved. "I'm sorry," he said gently.

Jim nodded. "I keep hoping, you know, after the war's over, maybe we can all go home."

"I hope you can too," Steve said. "It's wrong that you should have ever had to leave."

"Yeah, well, given our options…" Jim said. He sat up a little straighter. "But enough about that." This trip was the first time he'd seen the ocean in three years. He wanted to enjoy it. He could always brood later. "You do much sailing in New York?"

They talked a little while, comparing the ocean and the sorts of things one did on the beach in California to New York. Jim knew the ocean wasn't warm everywhere like it was back home—case in point, the insufferable island they'd just left—but it was still weird to him to think about going to the beach and being cold.

They were talking about the different ways you could fry fish when the air shimmered in front of them and the ghost of a fluffy little silver animal appeared. Jim recognized it as one of Peggy's martens.

"Steve?" the Patronus asked in Peggy's voice. "Are you hearing this?" It sighed. "I don't know why I'm asking that. You obviously aren't—you haven't been answering. Or if you are hearing and can't answer, that's not good either." The marten sighed again. "Look, we're getting really worried about you all. The radio's giving us nothing, I've sent several Patronuses out to each one of you and there've been no answers, we've been using scrying spells and have even gotten a plane to do a few flyovers and we can't find a trace of you. It's hit the point we're getting ready to apparate out to the island to look for you. If you're getting any of this, please, just give us something—a Patronus, or a word on the radio, or, hell, even Morse Code would do it. If you can't talk, then know we're coming for you. But if you can…If you can, _please_ let me know you're alright." Her voice wavered just a bit there at the end and the marten disappeared.

"I guess the island didn't just cancel our magic—it kept anything else from getting in," Jim said. He'd been wondering about that—they would have started worrying back at school when they missed the first check-in, and in a couple of hours, the team would have been incommunicado for five days now. The anti-magic thing must have acted as some sort of shield, turning off whatever magic was sent there and keeping it from reaching them.

"We can't let them apparate onto that island," Steve said, looking back behind them worriedly, although Más Afuera was well out of sight by now. And good riddance.

"Yeah," Jim agreed. If no other magic could land there, they shouldn't be able to either. He didn't know what exactly happened when an apparation was stopped in the middle, but it probably wasn't good. He consulted his watch. "We should hit land in about fifteen minutes." He checked his wand, but it still wasn't working. "Without magic, I can't speed this thing up any, but if she just sent you that message, they'll wait a little bit to get an answer before apparating anywhere." He really hoped that was true. "We've got time to get word back."

Steve nodded. There had been a wizard they'd gotten the boat from on Más a Tierra. Not S.S.R., but not Hydra either—just a civilian, and when they gave his boat back, they could use his wand to send them a message. Or he could use his wand. Or something.

They hit land and dragged themselves ashore under the concerned eye of the boat's owner. Between Gabe, Bucky and Steve, they managed a stilted, awkward conversation—the three of them spoke some Spanish, but this guy spoke Spanish mixed with something local, and Jacques' translator was still offline. They got enough of what had happened explained that he consented to let one of them use his wand.

Gabe tried fixing the radio, but the magical component remained stubbornly off. He ended up sending Peggy a Patronus, and as the silver bobcat appeared and then flitted off into the air, Jim felt one of the worried coils that had been in his gut for five days unclench. Their wands weren't working yet, but whatever that thing was hadn't killed the magic inside them—they could still do spells, and they worked.

Gabe had just told her not to send a team to the island, and Peggy's marten came back, asking where they were and demanding to know what had happened and if they were all alright. They all looked at one another, unsure of how to answer.

"Tell her there was something on the island that turned all our magic off," Steve said at last. "That's why we couldn't answer her. Tell her we're hurt and still can't get out of here on our own. If she can send a Portkey or something…"

Gabe nodded. "Um," he wondered. "Should I tell her what happened to you?" he asked awkwardly, clearly wishing he didn't have to ask the question.

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it again, raising a hand in an 'I don't know' gesture. "If you can figure out how to say it," he said helplessly. It was a fair point. That wasn't the kind of thing you just wanted to spring on someone, but how the hell did you have that conversation?

Gabe nodded, considering as he conjured another silver bobcat. "Peggy," he said. "There was some kind of…anti-magical artifact on that island, and it turned off all our magic. Jim and Dugan think it'll come back, but we're kind of stuck right now. We've made it to Más a Tierra, but we need you to send someone with a Portkey or something to get us home. We're in rough shape—everybody's hurt, and Jim can't fix us without magic. And just, I guess, so you know, uh, Steve is…uh…well, he's…He had a lot more magic than the rest of us to get turned off, so he's kind of…back how he used to be." He didn't seem to be able to think of anything more to say, and the bobcat vanished.

"Back how he used to be?" Bucky asked. "What the hell kind of explanation is that?"

"Well, I'm sorry," Gabe snapped. "I didn't know what I was supposed to say."

"Buck, it's fine," Steve sighed. He'd perked up a little on the boat, but that slump was back in his shoulders now, worried lines creasing his eyes again. Jim supposed he'd found a weird sort of equilibrium on the island, being little and hiking and camping and just trying to stay alive. But now they were going back to the world they came from, and Steve wasn't supposed to be little there. For Steve's sake, Jim really hoped Dugan was right, that the serum would come back online with everything else.

"How long do you think it'll—" Dugan started, trying to steer the conversation to safer waters, stopping as the air twisted in front of them and Peggy appeared.

"Not long," Jim said, and there was a hell of a lot to have to figure out still, but he couldn't help smiling. "Oh, Peggy Carter, are you a sight for sore eyes."

She was looking at them all anxiously, concern only growing deeper as her eyes raked over the mud and blood coating them all. "What in the hell happened to you?" she asked worriedly.

"It's a very, very long story," Monty groaned.

"Well, we'll be home right off and we'll get you all taken care of," she said, the familiar business-like tone of Peggy On A Mission taking over her worry. "But where's Steve?"

Jim realized with a start that from where she was standing, Steve, who should have been easily visible, was blocked from her view by Bucky. Steve cleared his throat nervously and moved out to where she could see him.

"Over here," he said in a small voice.

Her eyes followed his voice and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, shock etched into every line of her face. "Bloody hell," she whispered.

* * *

_The team has finally made it off the island and get to go home! Lots still to figure out once they get there, but they can heal and rest and get a good meal and sleep on mattresses again. (Jim may have been channeling the author in this last section-camping is kind of the worst.) _

_It's been a rough few chapters for them, so while there is still some Tiny Steve emotional stuff ahead, there's also some nice fluff and recovery, not to mention investigating the mystery of the missing magic. This is a science problem that needs fixing, and Howard is on the case._

_ See you Friday!_


	78. A Lot Of Things To Figure Out

_Back to Hogwarts now to finally recover from the time on the island. Steve is still trying to get into the groove of being small again, and Peggy needs to wrap her head around this turn of events.  
_

* * *

Peggy was pacing up and down the path between the beds in the infirmary, unable to sit still long enough to make use of the chair Nurse Rains had gotten for her. Steve was in the private room in the corner of the infirmary with Nurse Rains, Professor Phillips, Howard and Samantha. The rest of the team had been given beds and told to wait—broken bones and open wounds and bruises and sprains and cuts were all easy to fix, and Rains had them all sorted in a matter of minutes, but they still needed rest, and there was still the issue of the lack of magic to work out.

"Anything?" Bucky asked, walking over towards her cradling his arm. The infection had been cleared up and the wound healed, but it was still sore, and if the way he kept scratching at it was any indication, it itched where the skin was knitting back together.

"Not yet," she sighed. They'd been in there for almost an hour. "Bucky, what…" She didn't even know how to ask the question.

Bucky shook his head.

"And it's all back?" she confirmed. "His asthma and his heart condition and his allergies and everything?"

"Yeah." Bucky sank down onto the chair Peggy wasn't using, clearly exhausted. He should have been sleeping, like the rest of the group was doing, but she knew he wouldn't until he knew how Steve was.

While they waited, he filled her in on everything that had happened in the past five days. There had only been time for the barest of debriefs earlier, but he spared no detail now.

"I've never heard of anything like that before," she said. "Not in real life, anyway. There's always stories and things, but…" She looked at Bucky curiously, then handed him her wand. "You said Gabe still managed to do magic with that other man's wand. Have you tried anything yet?"

Bucky took the wand, and after thinking for a few seconds, Vanished the jug and pitcher sitting on the table by the nearest bed. He didn't seem to have any trouble doing so.

"So, you all still have magic then," she mused, taking the wand back. "It's just everything that was on the island at that time got switched off."

Bucky nodded. "Looks that way, yeah. Worst comes to it, our wands are dead and we buy new ones. But…" He looked over at the door Steve was behind. Steve could get a new wand too, but would he struggle to do magic the way he had before? If the serum in his blood was well and truly dead…Peggy shook her head.

"How's he taking it?" she asked.

Bucky shrugged. "Better than I would if I was him. Not great, though."

The door opened then, and they both turned their heads. Nurse Rains was standing there, a half-smile on her face. "I thought you two would be out here. You can come in now, if you'd like." She nodded for them to follow her, and Bucky pushed himself up with a groan and fell into step beside Peggy.

Peggy couldn't stop a small jolt of surprise when she saw Steve sitting on the bed. She knew he was small again, but it hadn't sunk all the way in yet, and knowing and seeing—again—were two different things. She saw Steve catch her reaction and look away, looking somewhat crestfallen, and a guilty knot twisted in her stomach. Bucky didn't react—he'd had five days to get used to it, she supposed—and he crossed the room and sat down on the foot of Steve's bed.

"You okay?" he asked.

Steve lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "Not any worse than I was before."

"I'm afraid we don't have any definitive answers yet," Rains said. "We've taken some blood and have a good deal of tests to run." Howard and Samantha were leaving, no doubt to their lab with samples of the aforementioned blood. Peggy saw Rains shoot Phillips a quick look and he left too. "In the meantime," Rains said gently, resting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "Willow's mixing up some medication to match your old prescriptions. In case this takes some time to sort out."

"Thanks," Steve said softly, and Peggy could tell he was trying to sound grateful, but it came out rather hollow.

"There's no reason yet to think it won't get sorted," Rains went on. "But the tests will take some time. Do you need anything to help you rest?"

"No, Ma'am," he said, and that seemed true enough. He looked exhausted.

"I'll leave this here anyway, just in case," she said, setting down two cups of sleeping potion on the table. "You need your rest too, Mr. Barnes," she continued, looking at Bucky. "Over there." She pointed to the other bed, and Bucky nodded, patted Steve's arm, and walked over to the other bed.

"Can I stay?" Peggy asked.

"Of course, dear," Nurse Rains said. Despite her attempts to encourage Steve, she still seemed at a loss for anything else to say. "I'll be back later."

Peggy moved to sit on the side of Steve's bed, then hesitated. "Do you want me to stay?" she asked.

"It's fine," Steve replied, and he looked…was he nervous?

Peggy nodded, then sat down in the chair next to the bed. There was a long, awkward moment where no one said anything—Steve seemed to have no desire to talk, and Peggy had no idea what to say. Bucky looked like he felt as though he were in the way. "Well," he said as the silence stretched on. "Sore as I still am, I think I'll need some of this to help me sleep." He picked up one of the cups of sleeping potion, downing it in one, then nodded at the two of them before rolling over. It wasn't even a minute before the potion kicked in and his breathing changed, low and slow and asleep. Peggy appreciated his thoughtfulness in giving her and Steve some space to talk, while at the same time envying his escape from this supremely uncomfortable moment.

She'd been trying to avoid looking at Steve too much—when she did, she felt like she was staring, trying to wrap her head around his new (old?) body, and she didn't want him to think she was gawking. She remembered the way he'd deflated when she startled after coming into the room, though, and thought perhaps _not_ looking at him was giving the wrong impression too.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked finally, chastising herself internally for asking such a stupid question. He did look somewhat better than when she'd first seen him on the island—the bruising around his neck was gone, and the cuts and scrapes that had been hiding under the mud he'd been coated in were healed and the mud cleaned off. He wasn't sniffling or coughing anymore—after all that time out in the rain and the cold, he'd started coming down with something, but Nurse Rains was able to clear it right up.

"I guess," he said. "Nothing hurts that isn't supposed to anymore, so…" He shrugged and trailed off, rubbing absently at his left wrist as he did so, and Peggy remembered him doing that the last time he'd been small. His joints often ached, more so in the winter, and while it had been chilly on that rainy little island, it had been a good deal warmer than Scotland in January. She imagined those aches had increased somewhat since coming home.

"Can I… Do you need anything?" she asked.

Steve shrugged again. "I don't think so." He wasn't quite looking at her either, and Peggy suspected they were both looking away, then back up at the other one, but not at the same time, missing catching one another's eyes. "Look, Peggy, I'm actually really tired, so I think I'll just…" He trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence, then reached over for the cup of sleeping potion Nurse Rains had left him. "Thanks for coming," he said, then he drank down the potion. "You don't…You don't have to stay if you don't want to. I'm alright." He smiled sadly and fell asleep before Peggy could think of anything to say to that.

Peggy slumped down in the chair and leaned back, sighing deeply. Well. This was certainly a mess, wasn't it? To say that Steve was upset was a painfully obvious understatement, but she was trying to break it down more than that to figure out what she could do to help. On the one hand, his distant apathy was not unlike how he'd been after his mum had died—closed off and just sort of going through the motions, and while this may not have been a death, it was certainly a great loss. Completely understandable. On the other hand, she'd grown so accustomed to Steve fighting his way back up from everything that knocked him down that this defeatist attitude surprised her. She snorted softly. Oh, very nice, Peggy. Steve had just suffered a traumatic personal loss, and here she was disappointed that he wasn't reacting the way she wanted him to.

She crossed her arms and shifted uncomfortably. She wasn't…she wasn't _actually_ upset about how he was reacting, was she? Perhaps she was starting to conflate the Steve she knew and loved with the legend. Captain America would never wallow in defeat—he would simply get up swinging. Captain America wasn't a real person, though. But Steve Rogers was—a very real, human person who suffered and fell and sometimes took a little while to figure out which way was up again. But he always did. He always fought his way through the pain and stood back up again, and, even if it sometimes took a little while, _that_ was what made him a hero.

No, his reaction wasn't what she was upset about. It was simply a convenient hook to hang her anger on because she didn't know where to direct it. This wasn't an enemy she could fight or something she could fix if she just put the clues together right. She couldn't do anything about this, and it made her feel helpless and angry, and she needed to be careful to make sure she didn't direct that at Steve.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching over and stroking his forehead, brushing his hair over to the side.

She sat there a while longer, thinking. Though there wasn't much point speculating about the future until they got some answers from the tests and everything, she couldn't help it. How was this going to change things? She remembered how frustrated Steve had been back in Fifth Year, when everyone else had been off fighting and he was stuck waiting for them. The work he'd been doing then was important, but he'd still felt like he was relegated off to the sidelines. They couldn't do that to him again. His value to what they did lay in so much more than just his muscles—that had just been a way to get him in the door—but that was much easier to say than to put into a practice that kept him safe without making him feel as though they were simply humoring him.

It had only been mid-afternoon when she'd gone in and sat down, so she did get up after a bit to go and find something to eat. She found Rebecca and Esther too—the boys were all home, but sometimes when they came crashing in in situations like this, lines of communication to the families broke down. She made sure the girls knew their brothers were alright, and she pulled Rebecca aside and did her best to explain what had happened to Steve. She would have to see him sometime, and it was hardly the sort of thing you just wanted to spring on someone. She hoped she did a better job of preparing Rebecca for it than Gabe had done for her.

She returned to the infirmary after she ate. Steve had told her she didn't need to stay, but of course she was going to. She did wonder about his statement. Was he just feeling so low that he didn't think anything would make him feel better, or was he embarrassed? Peggy rather felt it was the latter. Why, she couldn't say—it wasn't as though Steve had done something foolish and done this to himself, or as though she hadn't seen this smaller version of Steve before. Perhaps he would feel better after having had some sleep, or waking up and seeing her still there, untroubled by whatever he thought might be the problem.

If she was going to stay here overnight, she needed a more comfortable place to sit, so she conjured herself a nice, cozy armchair to replace the hard wooden one beside the bed. She curled up on her side and rested her head on one of the arms, facing Steve, though it was a long time before she fell asleep.

She woke in the morning before either Steve or Bucky did, smiling slightly to herself at the sound of Steve snoring. Bucky had been right—he snored just as loudly no matter what size he was. Steve did seem a little surprised to see her still sitting there when he did wake up, though he seemed somewhat heartened by the fact too. That was something. The awkward uncertainty of what to say remained from last night, however, so their conversation revolved mainly around breakfast. It was something of a relief when Nurse Rains came to collect them.

The rest of the team was well-rested and back in good shape, and they were all going down to Howard's lab to do some more testing. Howard was frustrated that he didn't know more about the object in the ruins that had done this, but he'd been forbidden from going to inspect it. If the effects of the device _were_ permanent, no one had any desire for their chief engineer to be stripped of magic.

He took some blood from each of them for comparison's sake before running some practical tests. Each of them appeared to still have magic within them—they'd thought as much, but it was still reassuring to know for sure. Howard had them all try spells with his wand, as well as with Samantha's and Peggy's, and it seemed to work well—even the more complicated spells. (An uneasiness did settle over the room when Steve had a go—as they'd feared, his magical abilities had returned to their rather more unpredictable pre-serum state. He'd tried to act unbothered by it, saying he'd been expecting as much, but he'd gotten quite red and said very little afterwards, returning to his seat with an uneasy clench to his jaw.)

"Well," Howard said at last, having run out of tests to perform right before lunch. "The good news is, you can all still do magic. We're monitoring and testing your wands, and I don't want to say we're a hundred percent sure, but they're showing just enough signs of life, I think they may get their mojo back too."

"Really?" Jim asked excitedly.

"Yeah, I think so," Howard replied. "At least, we're getting a little more off them than we were last night, so if that continues, I'm anticipating them coming all the way back online. May take a little while, though. On that note, the rest of the stuff should do that too—Jacques's translator is perking up a little, and I'm not sure yet about the expanding charms on the bags, but I'm watching that too."

"What about me?" Steve asked quietly.

"Um, still working on that one," Howard said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Last night and this morning's samples of your blood didn't look like there was any change, but the serum is still in there. This didn't erase it. I'll be taking more blood periodically to monitor for change. And, from what you guys told me, when all the magic went off, the serum was the last thing to go, right?"

Steve nodded.

"The smaller magic looked like it went first, and that's what looks to be coming back first too," Howard said. "What you've got going on in there is pretty complicated magic, so it stands to reason that it will take longer to come back. I can tell you, though, that the serum we can still see in your blood is dormant, and that's a good sign."

"How so?" Steve wondered.

"Because it's not dead," Howard explained. "If it follows the pattern the rest of the stuff seems to be setting, it might very well wake back up on its own in a little while, and even if it doesn't, dormant has a hell of a lot better chance of being fixed than dead. I can't recreate the serum, but I might be able to figure out how to wake it up if I need to."

They broke up for lunch, and the rest of the team seemed encouraged by what Howard had said. Steve was still looking rather downcast, however, and if the way Bucky was draping his arm over Steve's shoulders and leaning in to talk to him was any indication, he hadn't found much hope in Howard's speech.

Peggy still wasn't sure what exactly she could do, but she should stop doing nothing, and there was a bit of clearing of the air to be done, just to remind Steve that even if she didn't know what to do, she was still there with him. Bucky looked up and she caught his eye and he nodded, returning his attention to Steve and making some sort of excuse to go. Steve looked over a little uneasily at Peggy, but nodded as Bucky left and walked over to meet her.

She smiled and he sort of smiled back. "I'm sorry if last night was a bit…" Peggy started, not sure of how to finish the sentence. "I'm afraid I don't really know what to say."

"It's okay," Steve told her. "You don't have to say anything. I've heard pretty much all of it by this point."

"I suppose you have," she agreed. "But that doesn't mean that I don't want to help. And maybe I'm not the one who needs to talk anyway." She reached over and grabbed his hand, twining her fingers through his, and even though his hand was a lot smaller now, it still fit against hers like that was where it was supposed to be. "How are you?"

"Exhausted," he sighed. "All over the place. Peggy, I…I've been trying to get a handle on this since it happened, I really have, but I…I don't know what I'm going to do," he said, his voice cracking just a bit.

"All things considered, I don't think anyone's expecting you to have a handle on anything just yet," she said. That got a very small smile out of him. She tugged on his hand, leading him over to a bench in a small alcove to sit down. "Go on."

He sighed again, and then he started talking, telling her everything that had happened on the island, everything that had been going through his head. How scared he was that he would be stuck this way. How useless he'd felt, as though he were dragging the team down. How the rest of them had shown him, with words and without, that he was still important to them, and how he struggled to hold on and really believe that. How he knew in his brain that he was more than just what the serum made him, but how his heart was still afraid that might not be true.

Every time he stumbled or got stuck, Peggy would squeeze his hand encouragingly, and that seemed to give him the strength to go on.

"I know everyone's hoping it'll come back with everyone else's magic," he sighed. "But I can't…I want to believe that so much. But I can't let myself believe it and then have it not happen. I need to be prepared for the fact that this might be me now."

Peggy nodded. It was pessimistic, but practical. She probably would have done the same if it had been her.

"And I kind of…" he went on. "I'm trying, but I kind of just want to curl up in a little ball and cry."

Peggy smiled sadly. "You can, if you want. I won't tell anyone."

He smiled at that. "Thanks. But I'm not going to. There's so much that I've lost, and not giving up is the one thing I've got left. So I'm gonna do this. Somehow. I'm gonna make it through this."

She couldn't help smiling at that, because that was such a Steve thing to say. "It's not the only thing you've got left," she said, leaning in and kissing his cheek.

He looked up at her, gratitude shining behind the sadness in his bright blue eyes.

"What can I do to help?"

"Unless you've got some of Erskine's serum tucked away in those magic pockets of yours…" he said with a smile. "Just being here is helping a lot."

"Alright," she said. She squeezed his hand again. She wished there was something physical, something tangible she could do to help, but there wasn't. What could she do but make sure he wasn't alone? "But if there's anything else I can do, let me know. I love you, and however this turns out, I'm not letting you go through it alone."

He smiled then, but it didn't quite reach his eyes, and color rose in his cheeks.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He looked down at his lap and sighed heavily. "You're way too good for me, you know that?"

"I don't understand."

He pulled his hand free of hers and scrubbed his hands down his face. "I…You have no idea how much I hate myself for this, but I…Every time this thought came up, I kept shoving it down, because it's stupid and it's wrong, but I couldn't make it stay away…"

"Steve, what are you talking about?"

He sighed and shook his head. "I was afraid this was going to bother you," he said, gesturing at his chest, and it took Peggy a second to realize that he meant his pre-serum physique. So _that's_ what had been troubling him last night, although she never would have thought…Something of her surprise must have shown in her face, because he sat up a little straighter and took her hand in both of his. "I didn't really think that," he hurried on. "Peggy, I know how much you love me, and hearing myself say that out loud, it sounds like I was doubting that, but that's not what it was, I just…" He sighed helplessly. "Peggy, for five days now, I have been _so_ scared. And that stupid fear kept gnawing its way into the front of my mind, and I know it's not true, but I couldn't…" He sighed and let go of her, lowering his head into his hand and hiding his face. "I'm sorry," he said in a small voice.

Peggy took a moment to try to put together what she wanted to say, then reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Steve," she said. Yes, the statement had originally hurt, but it was coming from an incredibly deep well of fear, and you couldn't take anything like that at face value. "Really," she said when he looked up at her. "I know what it's like to be scared and the mad sorts of holes our thoughts can fall into. It's really okay," she assured him. She smiled warmly. "And to answer the question you didn't ask, it doesn't bother me."

The smile he gave her was part hopeful, part uncertain. "I just…It sounds like I don't think very much of you—like all I think you care about is what I look like, and I know that's not true, I—"

She leaned in and kissed him, cutting him off before he could ramble himself into another hole. He was blinking at her in amazement when she pulled away. "Shut up," she told him.

He huffed a surprised laugh.

"Given the circumstances, it's a fair question," she told him. "Don't hate yourself for not being able to stop your mind going there. I'm not angry at you, and I'm, well, I'm glad you know me well enough to keep telling that fear it was wrong." She smiled at him, feeling heat rising in her cheeks. "To be honest, I struggled a bit with that when we first started going out." His eyebrows furrowed together in puzzlement and she smiled. "You, ah, well, I'm sure you remember Lorraine?"

Steve flushed. "Yeah."

"And, you know, right after that was when you and I got together, but there were a few hours there where I was terribly angry with you."

"It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life."

Peggy chuckled. "Well, truth is, that quite surprised me. I remember thinking that if you were going to be kissing anybody, you should have been kissing me, and I'd never actually thought that way about you before. It got me worrying that I was only thinking that because of the fact that you were tall and fit and handsome and everything, and I had to sit down and have a good think about it. That's what I was doing when you came and found me."

She sighed and shifted in her seat. "Really, I should have told you all this ages ago." If she had, perhaps that would have kept him from being afraid of this now. "But I was…Once I got it all figured out, I was a bit embarrassed about it."

"Embarrassed?" Steve asked.

She nodded. She'd felt a bit thick, realizing she'd taken so long to cotton on to something so obvious. "Thing is, I, well, I always knew you'd fancied me." His cheeks reddened and she smiled a little bit. "That much was fairly obvious from nearly the day we met. And this is going to sound terribly conceited, but I was…not unaccustomed to that." She was well aware that over the years, Steve had not been the only boy whose attention she'd caught, though it felt frightfully full of herself to say so. This time, it was her turn to blush and Steve's to smile.

"Thing about you, though," she went on. "Was that, as time went on, we became friends. Back in the beginning, we were sort of always the odd ones out, you and me. So we spent a lot of time together, and we became friends and I got to know you, and you were sweet and clever and kind, but I didn't like you the same way you liked me, and you seemed alright with that. You never got angry or acted like because you were my friend, you'd earned some sort of reciprocation of affection."

The puzzled look returned to his face. "Why would I?" he asked, nothing but sincerity in his tone.

Peggy leaned forward and kissed him again. "You have no idea how much I love you for asking that question." He still looked confused, so she explained. "There are a lot of men out there who only befriend a girl in the hopes of getting something more out of it. And you never did that, and you never thought of doing it, and that only increased my opinion of you more."

"So, yeah, we were friends," she carried on. "And we became really good friends. And what I only realized in retrospect is that we had such a good relationship that I sort of…slid over from thinking of you as a friend to thinking of you as more than that without really realizing it. Even now, I can't actually pinpoint it, it was so gradual, except to say maybe sometime in Fourth Year? Everything was so comfortable, I never saw any need to rush anything. I just sort of assumed someday we'd be something."

Peggy could feel her cheeks coloring again, having reached the part of the story that made her feel rather foolish. "And then there was Lorraine. At first, I was angry because I thought you'd moved on, but by the time you had explained what had happened, I'd realized how _I_ felt, and, while I may have never felt a need to rush before, now there was, well…there was competition."

"Competition?" Steve asked, arching an amused eyebrow.

"Shut up," she told him. "I told you it was embarrassing."

"Anyway," she sighed. "The point is, that big, tall, muscular, Post-Serum Steve was never the guy I fell in love with. He _is_ gorgeous, I'm not going to lie, but if that was all I was after, there are plenty of other options for a girl around here. I fell in love with Steve Rogers because he is kind, and brave, and good, and he cares about other people, he fights for what's right, and he is thoughtful and sweet and wonderful." Steve's mouth was hanging slightly agape and she leaned forward and kissed it.

"Big or small, you're still all of those things," she said softly, then kissed him again.

"Big or small, I still love you," she whispered before kissing him again, deeper this time.

"Big or small, you're still _mine_," she breathed, and she kissed him long and good, and his hands came up to wrap around her and thread his fingers into her hair, and he was kissing her back, and it didn't matter that he was so much smaller now and this should have felt different, because it didn't feel different at _all_. This was where they belonged.

Steve was looking a bit dangerously breathless when they pulled apart, and Peggy realized belatedly that they were going to have to readjust the way they went about this to accommodate his decreased lung capacity, but he was smiling. "Thank you," he said, and he was sitting up a bit straighter now. "I'm sorry I was being so stupid about this, I…" He trailed off and shook his head, then he looked back up at her with that smile that made her stomach do a little flip. "I love you too, you know," he told her.

"I know," she said, smiling warmly. She never got tired of hearing it.

"And you were right," he went on, still smiling. "I _did_ have a crush on you since pretty much the first time I saw you. You were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Still are," he said, and she felt herself blushing. "But it was…We couldn't have been here more than a week or two," he went on, smiling wider. "And you were nice to me and you wanted to be my friend, and that hadn't happened to me a lot before, so I thought you were pretty great; but, yeah, in, like, our second week here, we were walking down to the Herbology greenhouse, and Gilmore Hodge had been teasing you while we were walking, and I was moving up to say something to him when he reached over and patted you on the bottom and you swung around and just clocked him. I was, like, fifteen feet away and I could hear his nose breaking. And I remember very distinctly you telling him, 'Touch me again and I'll break more than your nose, you window-licking, knuckle-dragging wingnut.' I was staring at you with my mouth open thinking that you were my kind of girl."

Peggy laughed, though she felt herself blushing somewhat. She hadn't thought about that in years. Although, Hodge certainly had kept his distance.

"So, I liked you, and I liked you a lot," Steve went on. "But it's funny you should mention Fourth Year," he said, reaching over and taking her hand. "I don't know if you remember, but there was a day we all went and sat by the lake and played poker, and when people drifted off after the game, you asked to look through my sketchbook. There were all these sketches of my ma, and you said if I ever wanted to talk about her, you would listen. I was getting a lot better, but it still hurt, not having her around, and a few days after that one, I was feeling really low about it, and you noticed and came and sat by me down on one end of the dinner table. And you asked me what was wrong and didn't let me get away with just saying 'nothing', and we ended up sitting there until Study Hall, me talking about Ma and you listening. And you really listened. You weren't just asking to be nice, but you really cared and you really listened. And I'd always known you were brave and kind and smart and just amazing and I liked you—but that night was when I realized I was falling in love with you."

Peggy was very aware of her heart beating, and Steve smiled warmly and stretched up a bit to kiss her gently. "I should have told you that a long time ago too," he said softly.

"We always have been slow about that sort of thing, you and me," she said with a soft laugh.

Steve smiled at that. "Better late than never," he said, stretching up a bit more and kissing her again. "But, Peggy Carter, you were worth the wait."

* * *

After his talk with Peggy, Steve felt things settling in his soul a little more, but even so, it took more courage than he cared to admit to anyone to walk with her into the Dining Hall for lunch. It was one thing for the team and Peggy to know what had happened to him, but the whole school? Everyone probably wasn't actually staring at him the whole time, but it sure felt like it.

He spent most of the rest of the day in Howard's lab. He didn't feel like going back to the dorm and having to explain what happened and have everyone feel sorry for him, and it was too cold to go outside. He'd forgotten how much he hated the cold. His joints ached and even though he didn't take his coat off all day, he felt like he was still shivering.

Peggy sat with him and Bucky in the lab, catching them up on the homework they'd missed while they were stuck on the island. And the lab was a somewhat distracting, but encouraging place to be—Steve could see Howard working and hear the results of his endeavors without having to wait.

"Hey, have you talked to Becky?" Bucky asked him, looking up from the Herbology notes he was copying from Peggy. Steve shook his head. "She's worried about you," Bucky added.

"I know," Steve sighed. He felt kind of bad—he knew she knew what had happened and was probably wanting to see him—but he didn't know if he was ready for one more person feeling sorry for him. He frowned. That wasn't really fair to her, though. "I'll find her at dinner."

They worked until dinner, occasionally interrupted by Howard wanting to run a little test or take some more of Steve's blood. They headed for the Dining Hall again, and Steve told Bucky to save him a seat, squared his shoulders back, and drifted over to the Ravenclaw table to look for Becky.

She spotted him before he got there, hurrying over to meet him and saving him the trouble of announcing himself to the whole table. She didn't say anything, just flung her arms around him, and this drove home how different he was almost more than anything else because she was taller than him again. But there was a sense of desperation and relief in the way she held onto him, and Steve chose to focus on that instead and hugged her back. "Hey, Becky," he whispered.

"Hey," she said softly. She pulled back and looked him up and down. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Steve shrugged. "I'm not hurt."

"I didn't really mean that," she said with a sad smile.

"Yeah," Steve sighed. "I know. And…no, not really. But I'm working on it."

She nodded. "It's okay to not be okay," she said, and Steve smiled at that. "And I don't know how to make you feel better, but you can ask me if you need anything."

Steve's smile widened, something warm purring happily in his chest. "Thanks," he said, and he hugged her again.

"You know, I think you're taller," Becky said as she pulled back out of the hug.

"What?" Steve asked.

"I mean, taller than last time you were little," Becky clarified.

"Oh." She was right, actually—they'd measured him along with all the tests they'd been doing, and apparently, between fifteen and seventeen was when he was supposed to grow anyway, as he now had five inches on his previous pre-serum self. Sure, that made him four-eleven now, but, you know, that was something. "I am a little," he told her.

She nodded thoughtfully. "You know, it was kind of neat when I was ten, but I don't think I like being taller than you now. It's weird."

Steve huffed a laugh. "Yeah, it is. But I won't hold it against you."

Becky smiled. "Do they know if they can make you big again?"

"Maybe. They're still working on it."

She nodded. "Well, I hope they do. I know it's gotta be all weird for you, having everything all mixed up like this." She hugged him tightly again. "But if they don't, we'll figure out how to make it okay. I promise."

Steve swallowed down a lump in his throat and hugged her back. "Yeah, we will," he agreed. His family was still there for him, just like they always were. He kissed her quickly on the cheek. "Thank you."

He went and had dinner, and spent as long as he could sitting with Peggy before he couldn't avoid going back to the dorm anymore. He drew in a deep breath, then opened the door, and, yep, there it was, that awkward silence as everyone looked up and realized who was standing there. Steve had the absurd urge to wave, but he just stepped all the way into the room and shut the door.

His motion seemed to break the spell hanging over the common room, but the following reaction wasn't what he'd been expecting at all. Instead of gawking and whispering, he got several smiles and nods of greeting, a few calls of 'welcome back', and then everyone returned to what they were doing. Puzzled, he started making his way across the room to the hallway leading to the boys' side of the dorm.

"Hi, Steve," little Second-Year Geoff said as he passed, smiling and waving like he always did.

"Oh, sorry," said Anna, one of the Fifth-Year girls who had a tendency to drop things and who had just narrowly missed his toes with her Charms book. "Good to have you back," she said with a friendly smile as she picked up the book.

"There you are, mate," Morris said as Steve passed the chairs by the fireplace. "Listen, I reckon you'll want some time to settle in, but when you want them, I've got notes from Potions for you. You might get an extension, but there's a test on Tuesday."

Steve nodded his thanks, still a little on edge, like he was waiting for the ball to drop.

"Alright, Steve?" Helen Thorpe asked, and for a second, he thought this was it, but she continued. "You're looking a bit lost."

"Oh," he said. He scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. "I guess I…I've been getting a lot of weird looks, since I came back, and…"

"And you were expecting to feel like you were on display?" she guessed. He flushed a little and she smiled. "I'm not going to lie and say none of us are surprised, but magical accidents do happen around here. You're hardly the strangest thing to come through that door." Her smile softened a little bit. "It's just good to have you back safe."

Steve smiled, feeling that warm happy thing purring in his chest again. "Good to be back," he said. "Thanks."

Bucky was the only one in the room when Steve got there, sitting on top of his bed and flipping through some notes he'd borrowed. He looked up at Steve, looked down at his watch, then looked back up with a grin. "Is this Steve Rogers, out late enough with a girl to be pushing curfew?"

"Shut up," Steve grumbled. He nodded over at his trunk. "What's all that?" His trunk was at the foot of his bed where it always was, but several sets of clothes were folded up on top of it.

"Winston brought those by earlier," Bucky explained. "Some spares from Laundry that will fit you. So you don't have to keep borrowing Jacques' stuff." He craned his neck to look over towards Steve's bed. "There's supposed to be some shoes, too."

"Yeah, they're over here," Steve said, spotting them lined up neatly under his bed. "I guess I should have more than one pair of clothes," he sighed.

"Well, Howard did say it would take him a little while to figure things out," Bucky said, in a tone that suggested that the only thing keeping Steve from regaining the serum's powers was time. "You'll probably smell better if you have more than one shirt."

"Shut up," Steve told him again, but he smiled a little bit.

The next day brought a measure of good news. Their wands had started working again, and Steve felt something inside him click back into place when he picked up his maple and eagle feather wand and felt the warm hum of magic against his fingers. True, his command of magic was now back to its earlier, more pathetic state, but that was hardly the wand's fault, and it felt good to have it in his hand again.

He also received another degree of encouragement from a very unexpected source—none other than Colonel Chester Phillips. They'd been called in to his office to debrief what happened on the island, and when Steve had hesitated to take the lead like he usually did, unsure of where he stood now, Phillips had snapped, "Cat got your tongue? Hop to it, Captain; I've got a lot of other stuff to do today." Okay, yeah, it wasn't a lot, but it was Phillips. The fact that he was talking to Steve like he always did meant a lot.

Less encouraging were his Thursday classes—he set his desk on fire in Transfiguration, and Professor Applegate, who had not been here last time Steve had been small and prone to unintentional arson, had been very surprised and very unamused. Charms had been a disaster too, and he hadn't been able to get the spell to work to hold back the Venomous Tentactula's vines in Herbology and it had taken Bucky and Monty to get him out after it grabbed him (and then up to the infirmary, since his legs were starting to go numb where he'd been stung). At least Potions had gone alright.

"Rough day?" Peggy asked him at dinner.

"Yeah," he sighed, rubbing at the bandage covering one of the larger bites he'd gotten from the plant on his hand—it was healing but really itchy. "I'd forgotten how bad I am at all this stuff." The most frustrating part was that these were all things he'd been able to do before. It would have been different if he'd been failing at something new.

"You're not bad at it," Bucky said.

"Bucky, I nearly got eaten by a plant today," Steve huffed. "And the last time I set something on fire without meaning to was 1942."

"I think what he means is," Peggy said, reaching over and taking his injured hand. She rubbed her thumb gently across the top of the bandage, and that made it feel better, somehow. "That you just need to get the hang of it again."

"Yes," Bucky said, pointing at him with his soup spoon. "That. I mean, it works different for you now, but I think it'll get better once you figure out the new mechanics of it."

Steve tilted his head, not entirely convinced. There was some truth to that, he supposed, but… "Even back when I 'had the hang of it', I still wasn't very good."

"You did have to work harder at it," Bucky allowed. "And that sucks, I know. But you did always get better."

"And Applegate really shouldn't've gone off on you like that," Peggy added. "It's not as though you did any irreparable damage." She smiled. "Eyebrows grow back."

Steve smiled back, not entirely encouraged, but appreciating their efforts to cheer him up.

He still wasn't trying to let himself hope too much, but he felt a little flutter of it as they were all getting ready for bed later that night and Jacques started jumping excitedly around the room, declaring that his translator had just started working again. He was chattering gleefully and grabbed Dave and spun him in a circle before bouncing away to the bathroom. Jacques' translator charm had been the second thing to go out, and now it was the second to come back. Maybe Steve still had a shot after all.

Friday was another series of ups and downs. Steve spent a lot of time thinking and trying to remember how he used to get his magic to work, and by lunchtime, he'd managed to re-master the ability to do non-verbal spells. They weren't always very good spells, that was true, but he could still do this—he hadn't lost the skill, he just had to…relearn how to do it. He'd already learned it all once before, so it kind of sucked, but it was better than nothing.

So, he was feeling a little better about things by lunch…At least until the anaphylactic shock kicked in. He knew he was allergic to peanuts again—very severely so—and had been careful about it since getting back. Lunch had been sandwiches, as it often was, and a lot of them had peanut butter on them, as they often did. Winston had made sure to send up some tuna sandwiches for him on their own plate, and he'd made them himself, well away from the part of the kitchen where the peanut butter was. His friends remembered too, and those of them that did eat peanut butter made sure to wash their hands before getting too close to him. He thought he was doing alright.

What hadn't occurred to any of them—and fair enough, because how many people had Steve gone around kissing last time he'd been allergic to peanuts?—was that while Peggy did make sure to wash her hands, she probably should have brushed her teeth too. She'd rinsed the remains of her sandwich out of her mouth with a glass of water, but that evidently had not been enough. That didn't all click together until Steve woke up in the infirmary with an oxygen mask and an IV in his arm and his mouth feeling kind of tingly, but, yeah, it was fairly obvious in hindsight.

On the plus side, his not having a reaction like this in more than two years meant Bucky was worried enough to forget about smacking him in the head for making such a stupid mistake. On the negative side, Peggy felt so guilty about what had happened that Steve could tell she'd been crying, and that hurt even more than running out of air had.

"Peggy, I'm okay," he assured her, taking her hand, although he wasn't sure how much impact the words had coming from beneath an oxygen mask.

"Steve, I almost killed you!" she argued, her voice wavering dangerously.

"It wasn't that bad," he said. Over Peggy's shoulder, Steve could see Bucky fighting down the urge to snap that yes, it had been that bad, not wanting to make Peggy feel even worse.

"We got him up here in plenty of time," Bucky said, and if it sounded a little begrudging, Peggy didn't seem to notice.

"I'm so sorry," she said sadly.

"Peggy, it…" Steve squeezed her hand. "It's an honest mistake. It's on me, really, it's my allergy. I should have realized that the peanut oil would still be in your mouth."

"I should've too," Peggy insisted. "I knew enough to wash it off my hands, I…" She had since brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth out several times with something Nurse Rains had given her to get rid of the peanut oil. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alright," Steve told her. "I'm not mad." He smiled. "I'd kiss you and prove it to you, but, you know." He gestured at the oxygen mask. That got a small smile out of her.

"I'm never going to eat peanut butter again," she said.

"Don't say that," Steve told her. "Peanut butter is delicious."

"So are plenty of other things that aren't going to kill you," she said, leaning in and kissing him softly on the cheek.

"If you guys are going to start making out, I'm going to leave," Bucky declared.

Once Steve had woken up, Rains was able to give him a couple of potions and get rid of the IV, and after a couple of hours, she let him out, sure that the anaphylaxis had run its course. "Twice in two days is a record even for you, love," she told him. "Do be a bit more careful."

By the evening, he was feeling fine and breathing like he should have. When they checked in with Howard, they were encouraged to hear that the expanding charms on the bags had come back to life—well, Bucky's and Jim's had, anyway. Monty's was in too many pieces for a resurrection. Jim spent a while testing the contents of the bag he'd brought back, pleased to find them all working. Howard had also given Steve his compass back—Steve wasn't sure when exactly it had quit, but it was back now too.

"So, this is pretty good news, huh?" Bucky said as they walked back to their dorm. "Everything's coming back online. So maybe—"

"I know, I know," Steve interrupted. "Maybe I'm next."

Bucky looked down at him curiously. "No need to sound so excited about it."

Steve sighed. "I'm just…I'm just trying not to get my hopes up too much. Wands and translator charms and expanding spells, hell, even magic compasses, that's…It's not like we've got the only ones of any of those in the world. What should be in here is…" He trailed off, gesturing at his chest. "Different. What if it doesn't react the same way as everything else?"

"What if it does?" Bucky countered.

"Howard said he still hasn't seen any change in my blood yet," Steve pointed out.

"So?" Bucky said. "It was last to go, and if it keeps to the schedule everything else is, maybe we'll see some signs tomorrow."

"Maybe," Steve allowed. "I just don't want to get my hopes up too high and then just wind up falling farther down."

"Alright," Bucky said, and he looked like he understood. "But don't give all the way up, huh?"

Despite everything he'd been saying, Steve would have been lying if he'd said that something inside him wasn't hoping that Saturday would be his day. Even before Bucky had pointed it out, Steve had been doing the math. Things were coming back on in the order they went out, about a day apart. So, in theory, if it was going to happen for him, it would happen tomorrow. And though he was afraid of falling hard, he couldn't squash that hope all the way down.

Saturday, however, came and went without any change. Steve felt himself being crushed a little more all day as the hours ticked by. When he went to bed, he tried telling himself that was it, though something in him hoped he might be woken up in the night by the pain of growing muscles and bones. It hurt more than he thought it would when he woke up Sunday morning and it hadn't happened.

Nothing continued to happen on Sunday. Howard had been combing through Erskine's notes, running every test and theory he could think of on the blood he'd taken from Steve, casting spells every which way and brewing potions. He seemed to take it as a personal insult that the serum refused to cooperate with him. Steve felt himself slipping back into that depression that had weighed so heavily on him on the island. This was really him now. He'd kind of accepted that earlier, or he'd thought he had anyway, but then he'd started to hope. He wanted to be mad at Bucky and Peggy for giving it to him, but he couldn't—he would've found it anyway.

He went to bed early, curling up in a little ball at the head of his bed under the extra blankets he'd had to ask Winston for. He slept uneasily—he was worried and his joints ached and he was still cold. He should probably ask for another blanket or two. He woke up very abruptly, feeling like someone was staring at him, then sat up in bed with a startled yelp at the sight of Howard Stark standing there about eight inches away from his face.

"Howard?" he asked. "What are you doing?" Howard's hair was standing out in more directions than should have been possible in only three dimensions, and his eyes were wild and a little frantic.

"Howard, it's three in the morning," Bucky groaned from the next bed over. "What the hell, man?"

"I think I did it," Howard said.

"Did what?" Steve asked.

"I think I figured it out. It's so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it before—"

"What did you figure out, and why are you in our room at three in the freaking morning?" Bucky snapped. "How did you even get in here?"

"It's been right there in front of me this whole time," Howard said, not answering any of his questions. "Well, not _right_ there. It was under some stuff, but still, it was there, and I can't believe I didn't see it."

"Did you get hit with a spell wrong or something?" Steve wondered.

"What? No," Howard said.

"Then what are you doing?"

"Doing? I'm letting you know I've figured it out," Howard replied, like it should have been obvious.

"Yeah, we got that," Bucky sighed. "What did you figure out and why couldn't it wait until the sun was up?"

"Steve!" Howard said.

"You figured Steve out?" Bucky asked. "He's pretty straightforward, but congratulations, I guess."

"No!" Howard sighed, frustrated. He looked back and forth between them as if he was expecting them to reach the same conclusion he had. Maybe Steve was just tired, but he couldn't even see the tracks Howard was driving on, never mind follow his train of thought.

"I figured out how to jumpstart the serum again," Howard said patiently, as if he was talking to two very small children.

Steve blinked stupidly at him for a second before it clicked. "You figured it out?" he breathed.

"I did," Howard said. He shot Bucky a smug eyebrow. "I mean, I can wait until after the sun comes up to show you, but…"

"No!" Steve said, flinging his covers aside. "Is it ready? Can we do it now?"

"Why do you think I'm up here?" Howard asked.

Steve jumped out of bed, ignoring the cold stone beneath his feet and barely registering the bathrobe Bucky tossed at him, sliding his arms into it as he hurried after Howard. He'd figured it out. He was going to get everything back!

"Told you it would happen, Stevie," Bucky said, falling into step beside him, wide awake now and grinning.

"Yeah, you think you're so smart," Steve said, unable to stop the grin that was spreading across his face too.

"I am," Bucky told him. "Your life would be a lot easier if you just accepted that."

"Shut up," Steve said, still smiling.

Bucky looped an arm over his shoulders and tugged him over closer, ruffling his hair. "C'mon, punk. Let's go see if we can make your uniform fit again."

Down in Howard's dungeon lab, Steve was surprised to see the space in the middle cleared out and a familiar, large green capsule sitting in the middle of everything, surrounded by computer terminals in a precarious-looking heap.

"What's that thing?" Bucky asked.

"The capsule from the experiment," Steve said. "When I got big the first time."

"Exactly!" Howard said, evidently pleased that Steve had remembered.

"You're going to do the experiment on him again?" Bucky asked.

"No," Samantha said, coming in from the other door, levitating some sort of bulky machine the size of a fridge in front of her. Peggy was walking in behind her, wrapped up in a dark red bathrobe and still looking a little sleepy. "Howard, if you were going to drag them out of bed, you could have at least explained."

"I did!" Howard protested.

"Not really," Steve said. He smiled apologetically, not wanting Howard to think he was upset. "You said you had something, but you didn't say what."

"Oh. Okay, well," Howard said. "Like I've been saying all week, the serum's still in your blood, right? It's just dormant." He waited for them all to nod. "The funky island doohickey powered it down, but, like with all the other stuff, it didn't get rid of it. It's just, since the serum is a special case, it didn't come back on by itself like everything else did. But everything I saw in the blood samples, everything I tried, it looked like it would come back if I could wake it up. I just needed to figure out how. No, put it on the left side," he said as Samantha lowered the machine to the ground. She narrowed her eyes at him unhappily, but flicked her wand and moved it over.

"I can't believe it took me this long to think of using the capsule," Howard went on. "It's been literally right here in the lab the whole time. I mean, it was in a couple of pieces and it was under some stuff since it has kind of a niche purpose, but it was here. But basically, we put you back in it, and a combo of the Vita-Rays and some spells Samantha and I specialized, and it should wake the serum right back up."

"How well have you thought this through?" Bucky asked suspiciously. "Because you look like you rolled out of bed ten minutes ago with this idea, and now you're just wanting to stick Steve inside a big electric box, and we're not doing that."

Steve had a better idea of how the capsule worked than Bucky did and was game to try, but he'd been wondering that too.

"His hair always looks like that when he's been thinking," Samantha told them, hooking the machine she'd brought in up to the rest of the set-up. "We've actually been working on this all day and getting it tested and ready. He did fall asleep for about an hour while I was putting the generator back together," she said with a smirk. "If you're wondering about the disheveled, mad-scientist air."

"It's been a long weekend," Howard huffed. "And I—" He sighed. "It's been tested, alright? A lot. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but even if it doesn't, it won't do any harm."

"Do I just go in when you have it ready?" Steve wondered. "Last time there was other stuff I had to do first."

"Hmm? Oh, no, all that 'no fluids' and stuff was for the serum," Howard said. "You've already got that. Once we have this all set up, we're good to go. Have a seat while we get all this tech stuff hooked up."

Steve and Bucky took a seat on the couch along the wall, and Peggy joined them. "Morning," she said, sliding her hand into Steve's. His fingers were freezing, and hers were nice and warm.

"You sure about this, Steve?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah," Steve said, and he was kind of nervous, but not because he was worried. He felt jittery with anticipation—this was something he'd done before, and it had worked then, and he was going to be okay! They were going to fix him!

"It did work before," Peggy said.

"Yeah, with Erskine, and, like, a big lab set up just for this," Bucky argued. "Howard said he pulled that thing out of a pile of junk and had to put it back together."

"Buck, Howard doesn't want to hurt me," Steve said. "If he says it'll be okay, then I trust him. It'll be alright."

Bucky made a kind of _hmmph_ noise and didn't look entirely convinced. Steve smiled.

It didn't take too long for Howard and Samantha to get everything set up. As best as Steve could tell, it looked the same as the set up in London had—the capsule was in the middle, and the computer terminals were in a pile instead of a row, but they were there to control the machine, and it was probably easier for Howard to reach all the controls when they were stacked up like that, since he didn't have a room full of assistants this time. The only additional component was the big machine Samantha had brought in, which turned out to be a generator. Howard had built himself one a little while back, tired of having to go to London every time one of his experiments required electricity. Steve recalled that it had taken a good chunk of the city's power grid last time, but Howard, being Howard, had built himself an amped-up, magically enhanced generator that he assured them would create enough power.

"Okay," Howard said, rubbing his hands together as he looked over his handiwork. "I think we're good. Hop on up in there, Steve."

"You might want to change first," Samantha said.

"Oh, yeah," Howard amended. Though he'd forgotten right now, he'd evidently remembered earlier, because he dug through a pile of stuff on his desk and pulled out a pair of pants that Steve recognized as his own.

"Why do you have my pants?" he wondered.

Howard laughed. "Told you we'd been getting ready for this all day. Had one of the house elves bring 'em over from Laundry." He smirked. "Unless you want to go all the way with the Howling Commando name for this and, you know, actually _go_ commando."

Bucky laughed at that, but Steve could feel himself going bright red. He refused to look at Peggy and see what her reaction to that statement was. Howard handed him the pants and he got changed in the little bathroom in the corner. He had to gather a bunch of the waistband in his fist to hold the pants up as he walked back out. Peggy and Bucky, very tactfully, did not laugh when he shuffled back into the lab with the hems of the pants pooling around his ankles.

Bucky came over to help him climb into the capsule without losing his pants. Peggy waited until he was situated, then came over and took his hand. "I hope this works," she told him. "Because I know how much you want it to. But I love you no matter how this turns out," she said warmly, then put her hands to his face and kissed him deep enough to leave him a little breathless. "Good luck," she said.

"I know you don't have a lot of control over this thing, but be careful, huh?" Bucky said, patting him on the arm. "You better get back out of this thing in one piece."

Steve smiled. "I will. It'll be alright, Buck. Don't worry."

Howard waved for Bucky and Peggy to back up, then had Steve lie down while he adjusted the straps. "Okay, so, we're skipping the serum part of the process. No needles this time. This thing was always supposed to activate the serum, so, since the serum's already in there, when we turn it on, it'll go straight to closing up and the light and the heat and everything inside." He frowned apologetically. "If it works, it's going to hurt like it did last time. It's just science—no way around that one."

"It's alright. I'm ready for it," Steve said. And he was. Of course it was going to hurt, bones and muscles tearing and stretching, but Steve had done this before. He knew it wouldn't last long, and the pain was a price he'd gladly pay if it got all of his abilities back.

Howard nodded, patted his shoulder and stepped away, hitting a button that had the outside of the capsule closing and rotating upright again. Even though Steve was ready for it to hurt, he was still a little nervous, but he smiled when heard Bucky's voice over the whir of the machinery demanding, "What do you mean it's going to hurt?"

The capsule snapped shut and Steve slid down like he did the last time. He wondered if that's what the restraining strap was really for—catching him under the armpits and keeping him from dropping into the bottom of the machine. The hiss of air being pumped into the machine whited out what little noise Steve could hear through the walls of the capsule. He took a deep breath, bracing himself. This was it.

A sharp whine started in the walls of the machine, accompanied almost immediately by a blinding white light. Steve slammed his eyes shut, feeling his heart rate speed up. Last time, he'd been able to feel the serum moving into his body, building up from a weird feeling to an uncomfortable one to a painful one. This time, the pain hit without warning and he couldn't hold back a yell. Something was moving in his blood, dancing along in his veins, and even though he knew the pain was part of him growing up and out, for several seconds it felt as though it was crushing him down and in. He couldn't breathe, it hurt so bad, and then it was all happening, and it was hard to be as excited about it as he wanted to, because it hurt like hell.

Even though what had come of taking the serum had been one of the best things that had ever happened to him, those moments inside the capsule still visited him occasionally in his nightmares, and he was reminded again with startling clarity why. His muscles were tearing and knitting back together and tearing and knitting back together, over and over again as they stretched and expanded. His skin felt like it was going to rip right open as everything underneath it strained up against it. His bones were growing too, and he might have been imagining it—it was hard to tell over the sound of his own voice screaming—but Steve thought he could hear them snapping and cracking as they grew so much faster than they ever should have.

Steve felt his feet reaching the floor of the capsule, the cool metal a welcome relief to the burning under his skin, and he felt the strap over his chest getting tighter as he expanded against it, then snapping open just like it had done last time. Did that mean it was almost over? Steve couldn't remember how long it had taken. Afterwards, it seemed to have been done in no time at all, but inside, he remembered it taking an eternity, just like it was doing now. At least his lungs were bigger now, because he needed all the air he could take in to scream in pain, and yes, he wanted this, he did, he did, but he was going to pass out if Howard didn't hurry the hell up!

Over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, it took him a second to realize that the noise of the machine had stopped, and then he felt goosebumps prickle over his body as a rush of cool air hit his skin when the capsule opened. It was over. He did it. He couldn't move just yet, couldn't do anything but breathe for a second, but he did it. He made it.

He staggered forward, hands on his chest helping him stay upright as he stumbled down to the floor, and he forced his eyes open. There was Howard, under his shoulder like he was last time, and Bucky on his other side, and he could look Bucky in the eye now, and it had worked! It worked!

"We did it," he breathed.

"Yeah, we did," Howard said. "Told you." He was trying to sound smug, but he sounded almost as happy as Steve did.

"Stevie, are you okay?" Bucky asked, his face a mixture of joy, relief, and deep concern. Steve wondered how much of his screaming had escaped the walls of the capsule.

"I'm good," Steve said, pushing himself upright as his muscles steadied. He stood up straight, holding out his arms. "Pain's already gone," he assured him. Steve grinned widely, relief coursing through his veins. "Bucky, I'm back." And he was. Everything he'd lost, Steve could feel it inside him again—the power of the muscles and the magic and the strength he used to have, the steady heartbeat and the lack of pain and the deep, even breaths flowing through his healthy lungs. He grabbed Bucky's shoulders and laughed joyfully as he pulled him into a crushing hug, unable to hold it back anymore. "I'm back!"

Bucky still looked a little worried, but he was grinning now, Steve's enthusiasm contagious. Then Peggy was there in front of him, and Steve scooped her up off her feet like he hadn't thought he'd ever be able to do again and spun around in a circle and kissed her, long and deep and desperate and joyful and all the other emotions that were coming too fast for words.

"It worked," he whispered when they stopped to breathe, happy tears pooling in his eyes. He still was holding her close against his chest, unwilling to put her down, as if that would break the spell somehow.

"It worked," she agreed. "Welcome back," she breathed, then she kissed him again.

* * *

_Ta-dah! Everything's finally back to normal. A nice happy note to end on and get some rest for the weekend before things pick up pace again._

_See you Monday!_


	79. The Fallen Soldier

_Steve is big again and there is much rejoicing! Now it's time to get back to work.  
_

* * *

The whole thing down in Howard's lab had taken less than an hour, but, needless to say, there had been no going back to bed afterwards. Steve was on Cloud Nine, bouncing around the lab like a kid on Christmas morning—Bucky didn't think he'd seen him so ready to just float away since the day he and Peggy had gotten together and he'd come back to the dorm and told Bucky she'd kissed him.

Since they were all too wired up to sleep anyway, Howard decided to go ahead and run a few tests to make sure everything had gone the way it was supposed to. Steve was happy to acquiesce, but he was just so excited to have everything back again that Howard actually had a hard time getting him to sit still.

Steve looked ridiculous, dancing around the lab in his bathrobe like a four-year-old on a sugar high, but that wasn't why Bucky was laughing. Steve's excitement was contagious, and all these things, these good things that his best friend had been given and deserved to have, he had them all back now. More than that, he had back that spark in his eye, that spring in his step, that confidence that he'd been trying so hard to find since Más Afuera. Steve was happy again, and Bucky was happy too.

They all headed back upstairs around sunrise. Bucky and Peggy walked at a much more reasonable pace, while Steve ran up the stairs, back down to join them, then up again. Then down and up a few more times. Everyone's reactions back in the dorm when they woke up and saw Steve were pretty fantastic. Jacques was so delighted, he grabbed Steve and kissed his cheeks, exclaiming congratulations in French, and that did seem to bring Steve back down to earth a little bit.

Far and away, however, the best reaction to Steve's return to super-soldier was Professor Phillips. While it was true that Howard and Samantha had been thorough in their testing prior to sticking Steve back into the experiment box, they had evidently forgotten the part about telling Phillips they were going to do it. Defense Against the Dark Arts was their first class of the day, and they'd all stood outside and waited for several minutes as the sound of Phillips yelling echoed down the corridor.

"How can you be a genius and be this stupid?!" Phillips demanded. "Boy, you don't have the good sense God gave to cottage cheese, I swear—"

"Sir, we tested everything before we started," Howard replied. "It was perfectly safe—"

"Don't interrupt me; I wasn't finished," Phillips snapped. "You take one of my best men and stick him inside your magic microwave without so much as a note? Of all the hare-brained…"

It went on in this vein for a little while longer before the door opened and the class tried their best to act as though they hadn't heard a thing. Howard walked out looking mildly chastised but not overly bothered by the dressing down, shooting Steve and Bucky a wink as he passed. They all filed in to class and sat down, though Steve hovered a little awkwardly by Phillips' desk.

"Um, I'm sorry, Sir, I didn't know he didn't tell you," Steve started. True, neither he or Bucky had asked, but they'd assumed it had been alright to go ahead.

"I know," Phillips said, still sounding annoyed. His glower softened just a little when he looked up. "Either way, I'm glad it worked. Now, go sit down."

Steve's excitement lasted the rest of the day. He could do magic in classes again as well as he used to be able to, though he got a little over-enthusiastic in his excitement, which did lead to another desk fire in Transfiguration. Just a little one. Bucky intended to give him grief about that one for a long time.

After school, they went down to the training area so Steve could run around some more and test out his muscles and stamina again. Steve was usually pretty good about being careful when they sparred, but, given his exuberance throughout the rest of the day, Bucky declined the offer to go a few rounds with him. Dugan had no such qualms, and got a broken wrist and jaw for his trouble, but he didn't seem to mind overly much. Steve apologized a lot and Dugan waved it off and came back from the infirmary not too much later good as new.

"That's just showing off," Jim said, watching with a raised eyebrow as Steve jumped and flipped around the exercise bars.

"I would say he's just excited," Bucky said with a grin. "But that _is_ a lot of unnecessary twirling." Steve swung himself up on one of the bars and into the air, executing several mid-air spins before landing with a flourish that would not have been out of place at a swing-dance competition.

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of flair," Peggy said, her head tilted to one side as she watched Steve. She shot Bucky a little grin. "Like Vicki said with you and Quidditch—it's rather lovely to watch."

It took a couple of days for Steve to come down off his high, although Bucky still caught him flexing or doing little jumps or stretches when he didn't think anyone was looking, like he was testing to make sure the serum was still working. Things got back to normal fairly quickly, like they always seemed to after missions. Moving into February, teachers were starting to talk about N.E.W.T.'s like they were tomorrow, with homework increasing accordingly, so it was kind of a relief when they got to go out on some lower-key missions. Or it was a different kind of pressure, anyway. There was another factory mission, and a capture-and-extract they ran with Peggy in Amsterdam, which netted them not only the spy they went in after, but two more as well.

As far as Schmidt's factories went, they were really starting to cull them down. He'd built more since Steve's initial intel from the map in Azzano—he kind of had to, the way they were going through them—but the S.S.R.'s intelligence network was good at keeping up with the new ones, and production was slowing down. That _did_ make Bucky a little edgy, just knowing that they had to be pissing Schmidt off, and he and the rest of the team were keeping an eye out for retaliation, but none seemed to be forthcoming. Either Schmidt had decided it wasn't worth the trouble, or he had his hands full elsewhere. Peggy suspected it was the latter. They were hearing more and more about the Valkyrie, and factory output and the capturing of people to work in them was slowing down, which she thought meant that whatever the Valkyrie was, it was getting close to being finished. Their spies were digging as deep as they could to try to figure out what in the hell the thing was and where they could find it. Phillips was pushing harder on the factory-destroying missions—if they couldn't figure out what the Valkyrie was, maybe they could blow enough stuff up to keep it from getting finished.

They started gearing up to take out another factory they'd found in Poland. It was after sunset when they apparated in, landing in the snowy forest surrounding the factory. They spread out around the perimeter, taking their time getting set up—they'd been starting to run into more warding around the factories as Hydra got a little more desperate. Jim and Dugan, along with Patrick, the 89th's curse guy, and Alex, the 107th's, spent a lot of time studying the perimeter spells and muttering to themselves. Bucky left Steve to confer with Colin and Ethan and went to check in with some of the Fifth-Years who were having some trouble with their Patronuses.

"I just can't get it to work, Sergeant," Alfie sighed. "I don't understand, I've done it on missions before." Corporeal Patronuses were a tad advanced for Fifth-Year magic, but it was a required skill for all the military units before they were cleared for duty.

"Me too," said Caleb, another one of the 107th's Fifth-Years (Bucky really had to stop thinking of them as the new guys—they'd been at this for six months now). "It's not…You don't think they've got something in there messing with our magic, do you?" he asked nervously.

"Nah," Bucky assured him. "You're just nervous. In the heat of battle, it's just kind of instinct, but all this standing around gets to you, you know?"

"Are you not nervous, then?" Noah asked.

" 'Course I am," Bucky replied with a smile. "Anyone who's not nervous before a fight like this is either stupid or doesn't know what he's in for." That got a smile from the three of them. "I've just had more practice standing around being nervous than you guys have." He quickly conjured up a Patronus, the large bear glowing a warm silver before vanishing. "I know you guys know that you need a happy memory—a strong one. Some people mix it up, whatever comes into their heads, but for moments like this, you want a go-to one. Find one you know that works, use the same one every time. That way you're not searching for one while a Dementor's getting closer. Let me hear it—tell me what you've got." Since they weren't in the habit of having a go-to memory, taking the time now to really think about it would help solidify it for them.

"Hmm," Caleb mused. He smiled. "Last Christmas, when my sister had a baby and I became an uncle."

"Playing Quidditch with my brother," Noah said.

"Getting picked for the 107th," Alfie said with a grin. "I never got picked for anything before."

"Alright," Bucky said, smiling. "While we've got a few minutes, really feel all those feelings, soak 'em in. And another thing that should help with being nervous," he told them. "Yeah, we're going into a fight, and there's spells and guns and Hydra guys trying to kill us, but not one of us is going in there alone. If you run into a Dementor and can't find it in you to make the spell work, someone else on your team is going to have your back. If you go down, someone on your team will be there to pick you back up. Bad things might happen, but you've got people to help you. Remember that."

"Yes, Sir," Alfie said, still grinning, and after a moment, a shiny silver badger shot out of the end of his wand. "Ha!"

"Told you," Bucky said. Caleb and Noah seemed inspired by Alfie's success, and their Patronuses joined his. Bucky made them practice a few more times before sending them off to where their teams were getting ready, confident that their confidence would hold.

"New guys okay?" Steve asked him when he came back.

"Yeah," Bucky replied. "Just antsy from standing around so long."

"Well, we're about to go in," Steve said. He checked his radio, making sure everyone had their comms open on the right frequency.

"107th in position," Colin's voice chirped in Bucky's ear.

"89th in position," Ethan echoed.

"Howling Commandos in position," Steve said. He cast one more look around the group. "Everyone ready to move on my mark. Three. Two. One."

The silence of the night was broken as the three teams rushed forward, defenses going down as they stormed the gates. Explosions and fires lit up the darkness, spells and bullets flying through the air. Blue lightning crackled from the energy guns on both sides, while Dementors glided through the night.

Bucky kept his focus on the path in front of him, fighting off anything in their way and trusting the rest of the men to take care of the things that weren't. They made it into the building without too much trouble. The 89th split for the prison wing and the Howlies headed for the main floor. Like clockwork, Monty, Dugan and Jacques disappeared to lay explosives while Jim and Gabe hit the communication office and Steve and Bucky fought off opposition. Bucky was familiar enough with the rhythm of Steve's fighting by now that he didn't have to think about it—he just moved in and out and up and back, covering and being covered, ducking and throwing and darting and switching, as in sync as if they were each other's shadows.

Steve grabbed Bucky and turned, his shield up at the sound of an energy weapon powering up, although, to both of their surprise, instead of blue lightning crackling around the edges of Steve's shield, a silent wave of energy pulsed out of the weapon and sent them both flying back into a wall of machinery.

Bucky was impressed with how quick Steve was to adjust, even in midair, spinning the two of them so that his shield took the brunt of the impact. That meant he was on the bottom when they landed, though, so Bucky flung up a shield spell to protect them as they shoved aside all the machine parts that had come loose in the collision and landed on them.

"Ow," Bucky complained. "Freaking Coleman guns. I thought we had 'em all by now." Eric Coleman's magically enhanced weaponry had been giving them grief ever since they had discovered them a year ago. The black marketeer had sold them to whoever had the money, and Hydra had been a regular customer. "You okay?"

"I'm good," Steve panted, climbing to his feet. "Keep the shield up for a second." He flung his own shield back in the direction of their attacker, and there was a satisfying _clang_ before it came flying back to his hand. "Guys, be advised, we've got some of those enhanced Coleman guns in play," he said over the radio.

"Seeing some out here too, Captain," came Colin's voice. "Your lads and the 89th will want to be careful on the way out."

"Roger that," they heard Ethan reply.

They got back to the fight, and it wasn't too much later that the 89th started getting the prisoners outside. Jim and Gabe had come down from the office by then, so Bucky broke off to help cover the escape. From where he sat, he could see most of the fight, and it was looking ugly. Coleman's guns looked different from the Tesseract guns that Hydra made, and now that he knew there were some out here, they were easy enough to spot. "Steve, there's a lot of those Coleman guns out here," he said from his perch up on a roof. "You guys really need to watch it coming out."

"Copy that," Steve said.

Bucky turned his attention to the end of the building where the prisoners were coming out. The 107th was keeping most of the fighting down on their end. Some soldiers were breaking through, though, firing faster than Bucky could keep up with. Ethan's guys were shielding the prisoners, but Bucky saw a few of them go down—not fatally, thankfully, since they were getting back up, but at least two of them looked like they took a hit from one of those guns that shot the fiery bullets, the way they had to be carried out.

"89th is taking more fire than I can cover!" Bucky yelled into his radio between shots. "We need backup on the east side of the building now!"

"On it, Sergeant!" came a voice that it took Bucky a second to place, but the burst of green fire he caught out of the side of his eye told him Alfie had come to help.

"Watch the guns, kid," Bucky told him, taking out two more Hydra soldiers and pausing to reload. "Same ones that got you that first mission." Alfie had taken a shot in the leg from one of those guns, and Bucky was sure he had no desire to repeat the experience.

"Aye, aye, Sir," Alfie replied. Another burst of green fire exploded somewhere off to his left.

Once the prisoners finally cleared the perimeter, Bucky swung around to focus his fire on the main fight. It was chaos, and between the smoke and dust and flames, it was hard to tell who was fighting who. He caught Steve and Patrick, took out one of the guys fighting them before turning to cover Jacques who was covering Chris who bleeding pretty badly. He spotted Ethan and Gabe and Jim, fired into a knot of Hydra soldiers, then lost sight of everyone as a truck exploded and sent dust and smoke billowing over the whole yard. Bucky cursed, taking the time to reload his rifle and fighting the urge to slide off the roof and join the melee. His job was up here and they needed eyes above the chaos—like right now, when a patch of smoke cleared just in time for him to shoot a guy who was about to take off Charlie's head.

His eyes darted over to the right, drawn by a flash of noise and color. There were four Hydra guys, two of them carrying Coleman guns, and they must have been a version Bucky had never seen before, because Colin was on the ground screaming and clutching at what looked like only part of his leg. Bucky took one of them and then another with a headshot, and then the other two were flying through the air as Alfie appeared, howling with fury and flinging his green flames every which way. Caleb ducked in behind him to cover their leader, and Bucky fired a couple more shots to cover them before turning to the crowd converging on Steve and Monty.

"Where the hell are all these guys coming from?!" Gabe yelled over the comms.

"We need a medic over by the supply truck!" Caleb called.

"Defensive spells going back up on the south side!" Jim yelled. "Do not retreat to the south, repeat, do _not_ retreat south!"

"Medic to the end of the loading dock!" called Alex.

"Dementors coming around the south side of the building! I need help!" Dugan called.

On and on the radio screamed, and Bucky couldn't do anything but keep shooting, shoving off the crushing panic hovering over his chest. He covered Charlie running for Colin, and Jim going to Chris and Kevin. He covered Monty and Alex and Steve and Ethan and Gabe and Jacques, and he hadn't seen Alfie in a while and Dugan was still yelling for help and Patrick and Noah were running and things were exploding and this was just getting uglier and maybe they were going to lose, but there were still people in Hydra black trying to kill his friends, so Bucky kept shooting.

Finally, _finally_, they'd fought a hole big enough to escape through, and Steve was calling the retreat over the radio, yelling at Monty to light the place up. Bucky slid down off the roof and ran, slowing down enough to help Caleb pull Phillip up off the ground, and the three of them ran for the fence.

An explosion rocked the night behind them, and they stopped to lower Phillip back down next to some of the other wounded. "You know the spell to slow that bleeding down?" Bucky panted.

Caleb nodded, too out of breath to talk, but pulling out his wand and passing it over Phillip's midsection. Bucky pushed himself to his feet quickly—if he stayed down, he might not get back up for a while. "Give me a count," Steve's voice came over the radio—he'd made it out alright, and one of the tense knots in Bucky's stomach uncurled.

He made his way through the trees, stopping at knots of people and counting, offering spells and help where he could. There were a _lot_ of wounded—aside from the usual magical injuries and bullet holes, those creative guns of Coleman's had done plenty of damage, and Bucky spat out a curse for the inventor and wished that Peggy hadn't killed him in Paris so that Bucky could do it right now.

He ran into Monty helping with the counting, and Dugan and Jacques were alive and upright and working on keeping watch until everyone could move. He finally found Alfie, and the kid was covered in blood and dirt but didn't actually look like he was hurt. He was sitting in a small clearing with Charlie and Colin, cradling Colin's head in his lap and crying. Colin was lying very still, his eyes closed, and nausea rose in Bucky's throat for a moment before Colin grunted and squinted an eye open to glare up at Alfie. "Will you stop crying on my face, you wee numpty? I'm not dead."

Bucky choked down a laugh at the statement, though he could certainly see why Alfie was so upset. Colin looked awful—from this close, Bucky could see that he _did_ still have all of his leg, technically, but it wasn't hanging on by very much. "How is he?" he asked softly, crouching down next to where Charlie was working.

"Not good," Charlie huffed. "I can't do anything but stabilize it enough to move him and hope Rains can fix it. It won't kill him, but I don't know if we can save the leg."

Bucky nodded, clapped Charlie on the shoulder and slid over closer to Colin's head. "What do you need?" he asked.

"Seeing as I'm a bit otherwise occupied," Colin said, gesturing down at his leg with a wince. "Can you make sure someone's doing the counting for my lads?"

"Already on it," Bucky assured him. "You need anything for the pain?"

Colin shook his head. "Charlie's a step ahead of you, mate. I'm feeling alright. If a bit damp," he added with a nod up at Alfie.

Bucky smiled and nodded, patting Alfie on the shoulder as he stood up. "He'll be alright, kid," Bucky assured him. "You did good covering him and getting him out of there." Alfie nodded, but didn't say anything, his eyes still focused on Charlie's work.

Bucky kept walking through, checking in with Monty and the guys from the 89th who were getting counts. He kept seeing people running little spells to help stop bleeding or fix minor broken bones, and, sure, they all knew how to do that and they all usually helped out with that, but Jim should be doing some of the bigger stuff, especially since Charlie was busy with Colin. Where was he?

"Hey, Steve?" Bucky said into his radio. "Do you know where Jim is? We got lots of guys around here who need some help. And I haven't seen Gabe yet either."

There was no response for just a beat too long, then Steve replied. "We're over by the big rock where we started."

"Is something wrong?" Bucky asked worriedly. Steve's voice was just a little too quiet, a touch too flat.

"Yeah," Steve said.

Bucky was already heading for the rock anyway, but he picked up his pace, an anxious weight settling into his stomach. Steve was fine, he'd sounded alright, but Jim and Gabe were with him, and he'd said something was wrong. Was one of them hurt?

He relayed his last count to Monty so he could take over and pushed through the trees around the big rock. For a moment, he felt relieved at the sight that greeted him. Steve was on his feet and Gabe was sitting down, neither of them looking injured. Jim was on the ground, but he was kneeling, working, not hurt, and that was good, everyone was okay, but then Bucky's eyes took in the rest of the scene. Jim was kneeling down and Ethan was lying in front of him, gasping in pain, and Jim's hands were inside his stomach and there was blood everywhere, staining the snow a deep red that looked black in the moonlight, and there was way too much of it. Whatever Jim was doing, it wasn't working.

"It isn't working, it isn't working!" Jim said desperately, pulling his hands up and grabbing for his wand again. "I can't—" He looked up at Steve as if he was hoping he could help. "I can't stop it with magic, and it's too fast for anything else. Everything inside is just…melting."

A fresh wave of blood spilled out of the hole in Ethan's stomach, and Bucky clamped a hand to his mouth in horror as he realized what was happening. He'd seen what a lot of Coleman's weapons could do, and he'd seen this one in the lab but never in action—the bullet released some sort of potion or acid or magic that dissolved everything it touched. That wasn't just blood pooling out of Ethan's body, it was his internal organs liquifying.

"Jim," Ethan rasped. He reached up a hand and wrapped it around Jim's wrist. "It's alright."

"No," Jim said. "No, I can do this, I can figure something out—"

"You can't," Ethan said. "I don't think—ah! I don't think there's enough to put back together." He managed a very pained smile. "Thanks for trying."

"What were you thinking?!" Gabe demanded, and Bucky was surprised for a moment that he would address Jim like that, especially right now, but then he realized he was talking to Ethan. "Why would you do that?"

"S'my job," Ethan groaned. "Rescuing people."

"You shouldn't have done that for me," Gabe insisted, and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, I should've," Ethan said. A tiny, pained, but genuine smile crossed his face. "You're a man worth saving, Jones." He closed his eyes, grimacing and crying out in pain. Steve moved forward and knelt down next to him, taking his hand. "Rogers," Ethan breathed. " 'm sorry. For everything, I…"

"Ssh," Steve told him, squeezing his hand and resting his other one on his shoulder. "You've already told me that." He smiled sadly. "I forgave you for all that a long time ago."

Ethan nodded. "I've tried to live up to that."

"And you have," Steve assured him. "You're a good guy, Ethan."

Whatever Ethan was going to say to that was cut off with another cry of pain, and he arched his back up off the ground, sending more blood and guts flowing down into the snow. "Bloody hell, that hurts," he breathed. He looked up at Steve, tears of anguish shining in his eyes. "Don't tell my mum about this part?" he asked softly. "Let her think I went quick."

Steve nodded, his own eyes glistening. "I will," he said. Ethan's breathing was slowing down, his pained breaths coming farther apart. It wouldn't be long now. Steve moved his hand off of Ethan's shoulder and cupped the back of his head, lifting it up off the snow. "There are a lot of people who are alive out there because of you and what you've done," he told him. "Thank you," he said solemnly, his voice starting to waver. He squeezed Ethan's hand tighter. "Ethan Green, it's been an honor serving with you."

Ethan smiled, and Bucky saw his shaking fingers tighten as much as they could manage in Steve's grip. "The honor's all mine, Captain." He held Steve's gaze a few seconds longer, then sighed heavily, his hand going slack and his head dropping back. Steve laid his head back down softly, letting go of his hand and folding it carefully on top of his chest. He reached up and gently closed the eyes that were staring up sightlessly at the sky, finally free of pain. A cold, heavy silence descended over the clearing as he pulled his hand back.

Ethan was gone.

* * *

_This was an unexpected loss, and we'll see on Friday that no one is quite sure how to handle it. See you then._


	80. Bruised And Battered Souls

_Steve has some stuff to work through now that Ethan's gone, and Bucky does too. Time for some introspection and sweetness.  
_

* * *

It was nearly midnight by the time Steve got finished with his debrief in Phillips' office. There was a lot to cover, never mind that he was doing the debrief alone. Colin was in the infirmary, and Ethan was…

Ethan was dead. It always hurt, losing someone in combat, someone Steve was responsible for, but he was surprised just how deep this one cut. He didn't hate Ethan anymore—hadn't hated him for a long time, but losing him still hurt more than he ever would have thought it would.

When Phillips dismissed him, he pushed himself wearily to his feet and left the office, contemplating the long walk up to the infirmary. The nine flights of stairs were a daunting prospect at the moment, but there were people he should check on, and sharing their pain was infinitely preferable to the long night of troubled contemplation and staring at the ceiling that was ahead of him if he went to bed.

He sighed heavily and started walking toward the stairs, surprised to hear the office door open and close behind him and the soft click of Peggy's shoes on the stone floor. "Aren't you supposed to be working?" he asked her. There was usually a lot for her and Phillips to sort out after the team came back from a mission.

"I can do it in the morning," she said, sliding her hand into his.

Steve smiled gratefully. People died on missions, and it wasn't as though he couldn't handle it on his own, but he appreciated her company. "I was going up to the infirmary to check on the wounded. You want to come?"

"You can go up in a minute," she told him, sitting down on the stairs instead of walking up them and tugging him down to sit beside her. "Talk to me first. You're not okay."

"I'm fine," he started, but stopped at the look she gave him. "No, I'm not okay," he sighed. She pulled his hand over into her lap and leaned into his shoulder, inviting him to go on. "You sure you want to do that?" he asked. "I have no idea what most of this stuff is I'm covered in."

"I can shower later," she said. "And you're stalling."

He huffed a brief laugh at that. "Yeah. See, if you'd just let me go up and check on people, then I could wait and not have to think about…" He sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. "Not think about what happened." He sighed again. "It was almost Gabe. Gabe was on the ground, pinned partway under some rubble that had fallen on him and he couldn't get his wand out. I had four guys on me and couldn't get over there fast enough. And Ethan just…"

Ethan had come flying in from the side, barreling into the soldier aiming at Gabe and taking him to the ground. Twin shots rang out, one from Ethan's gun and one from the soldier's. The Hydra soldier hadn't gotten up, but even then, even though Ethan was still moving, Steve had been able to tell Ethan wouldn't be getting up either.

"He took the shot," he said quietly. "Saved Gabe's life. We got him out, but…" He sniffed, a tight knot forming behind his eyes as he felt tears threatening to reappear. "Jim couldn't do anything. His guts were…they were _melting_." Steve couldn't think of a more painful way to die. He sniffed again. "He told me he was sorry," he said softly. "For the way he'd treated me. I—" He paused and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "He did that two years ago, Peggy. I forgave him then, why would he…" From where Steve was sitting, he'd more than made up for it by now. Had he still been feeling guilty about that after all this time?

It took him a minute before he could go on. Peggy squeezed his hand and wrapped her other hand around his bicep, warmth and stability flowing through the touch. "He was worried about his mom," Steve said, his voice wavering dangerously. "He was in so much pain, but he…" He swallowed hard. "He wanted me to tell her that it was quick so she wouldn't think he'd suffered." The first tear trickled out, and Peggy pulled him around so that his head was on her shoulder, kissing him gently on top of the head, heedless of the dirt and soot layered in his hair.

"I used to hate him, Peggy," he whispered. "I hated him so much. Then after he got better, I, I thought we were okay. You know? We worked together well and made a good team. We weren't friends, but we were okay. I thought that was fine. But he's gone now, and I…" He lifted his head enough to meet her eyes. He'd felt like they were square, but could he have done more? Should he have been trying for more than that? "_Was_ it good enough? Should I have… I should have tried harder to fix things, I…"

Peggy pulled him back into the hug. "It _was_ good enough," she whispered, stroking her fingers through his hair. "You did all you could—more than other people would have done. It's hard to admit you're wrong about something and change your life so drastically. Think how much harder it would have been for him to do that if you'd not forgiven him." She kissed the side of his face. "He became a better person because of you. And he did a lot of good in the world before tonight. He died a hero." She rested her head on top of his. "And you did enough."

Steve sat there for a while and cried, just holding on to her. She stroked his hair and rubbed her hand up and down his back, and when Steve finally sat up to look at her, her eyes were a little damp too. "I'm sorry, Steve," she said, smiling sadly and reaching up to brush his hair off his forehead. She leaned forward and kissed him gently, and Steve leaned in and pulled her closer to him, kissing her back and losing himself for a moment in how warm and alive and present she felt.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," she told him.

They sat there for a moment longer, Steve leaning in and resting his forehead against hers, before he pulled back and sat up straighter with a sigh. "Thanks," he said. The loss was still hanging heavy over him, but calm was settling into his soul for the moment. "You want to come with me while I check on the rest of the guys?"

"Alright," she said. "While we're at it, we'll have you looked over as well."

"I'm okay," he said. Sure, he was bruised and battered and sore, but it wasn't anything that wouldn't heal.

"You've not got anything that looks life-threatening," she corrected. "There's a difference." She rested a hand gently on his arm. "That needs cleaning out and looking at at the very least."

He looked down at the blood staining his sleeve, and yeah, that was a pretty bad cut. Not deep enough for stitches, and not enough blood to make him pass out, but now that she'd pointed it out, it did hurt pretty bad.

They walked up to the infirmary, and Nurse Rains gave him an exasperated look at having waited so long, but had his arm fixed up easily. Steve checked in with his team—those that were there, anyway. Gabe was staying overnight for his leg after all that stuff had fallen on him. Physically, he was going to be fine, but he was taking Ethan's death pretty hard. They'd had their fair share of beef in the past too, and Steve imagined the same guilty thoughts that were bouncing around in his head were running through Gabe's. He tried to say something encouraging, but he didn't linger. There was a time and a place for words, and a time and a place to sit alone and sort through things on your own, and Gabe didn't need Steve hanging around right now.

No one from the rest of the team was here—they'd all been hurt, but their injuries had been minor enough for easy fixes, and they'd all been sent to their dorms. Steve was a little surprised Bucky wasn't here—he'd taken some shrapnel to the shoulder during their final escape that no one, including Bucky, had noticed until after Ethan died, which had been long enough for it to get kind of messy. That was good, though, that it had been easy enough to fix to send him back to the dorm. Steve was still kind of worried about him—he'd been looking really rattled back in the woods, and Steve could tell it had to do with more than just his shoulder. Between what happened to Ethan, though, and sorting out the other casualties and wounded, Steve had been forced to shove the rest of his worry aside until after they got back. And Bucky would be asleep by now, so Steve would let those worries keep until morning.

With as long as it had taken Steve to get up to the infirmary, Nurse Rains had had plenty of time to get Colin figured out. Steve hadn't actually seen the injury, just heard about it, and he couldn't see it now—Colin's leg had disappeared under what looked like an entire roll of bandages, and it was splinted up and elevated, ankle to knee suspended from some sort of metal contraption above the bed. Rains wasn't sure yet if the leg could be reattached, but she was hopeful—some sort of magic was going on under all the bandages trying to stick things back together.

Steve had intended to give Colin a report on the rest of his unit if he'd been awake, and he was awake, but on so many painkillers that coherent conversation wasn't really an option. Steve just smiled and patted him on the shoulder and told him he'd talk to him when he was feeling better, leaving him to return to the conversation he'd been having in Gaelic with the bedpost. Steve's command of Gaelic was pretty shaky—and Scots Gaelic was a little different from Irish Gaelic—but he thought Colin was talking about potatoes.

He hesitated outside the infirmary doors, not really sure where to go next. He was exhausted and filthy and just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep, but he didn't know if his mind would let him.

"Don't want to go to bed?" Peggy asked.

Steve sighed. "Not really." He looked down at her and smiled. "You go ahead and go get some sleep, though. I'll be alright."

"I know you will," she said. "But I fancy a walk."

"At one-thirty in the morning?"

"I was thinking the Astronomy Tower? It's a clear night. The stars are gorgeous." She twined her fingers through his again and they set off up the stairs.

It was chilly up on top of the tower, but Steve pulled his jacket open so Peggy could snuggle up against his side, and they huddled together in one of the corners out of the wind. Peggy was right. It _was_ pretty up here.

They spent a little while talking about the mission. They always did this after every mission, good or bad, whether it was just one of them that had been out or both of them together. Not the tactical, military side of things, but just their feelings, thoughts and worries. When there was nothing more about the mission to be said, they sat in silence for a little while, just watching the stars.

"When the war's over," Peggy asked him. "Do you think you'll go on being Captain America?"

Steve was quiet for a minute, considering his answer. It was a big question, but it was kind of the time of night for that sort of thing. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't really know how to be anything else."

"Do you want to be anything else?"

"I think…" he sighed. "I think I'd like to try. Just to see what else I could do, you know? Not that I want to stop doing stuff to help people," he amended. "But there are ways to do that without wearing a patriotic jumpsuit."

Peggy giggled at that.

"I could join up with you in the S.S.R.," he said. He knew Peggy had no intentions of leaving her job, and it might be neat to work alongside her in a different capacity.

"You're already in the S.S.R.," she reminded him.

"Well, yeah, but I could do something less high-profile. Or, you know, I could leave the heroics to you and get some kind of nine to five job."

Peggy smiled. "Does that mean you'd have dinner ready for me every evening when I came home from work?"

"Sure," Steve said, echoing her smile with his own. "I can cook."

"Really?" she asked skeptically.

"Of course I can!" he said, mock-affronted. "Mrs. Barnes taught me how. I can make bread; I can cook vegetables and fish and chicken. I can even make pot roast."

"Can you?" Peggy asked, sounding impressed in spite of her teasing tone.

"Yep. It's delicious."

She giggled again. "Lamb chops?" she wondered.

"Yep. And pork."

"Beef stew?"

"Uh huh."

"Pasta?"

"And sauce to go with it."

"Chocolate cake?"

"Yep."

"Souffle?"

"No," he admitted.

"Well, can't cook everything, can you?" she teased.

"Can you make a souffle?" he asked.

"No."

He grinned. "I make a decent merengue, though. And I'm good at Jell-O. I can make it with the floating fruit pieces and everything. I'm not that great at pies, though. You want good pie, we're gonna have to end up next door to Bucky. He makes good pie."

"I never would have thought the boys from Brooklyn would be such good cooks," she said. She smiled. "I do like chocolate cake."

Steve smiled back and kissed the tip of her nose. "I'll make you one for your birthday."

They stayed on top of the Tower until the sun came up, and though it felt like it should have been wrong, somehow, to talk about things that really weren't all that important after what had happened the night before, Steve felt better than he had when they'd sat down. There was comfort in the little things.

Standing up after sitting so long in the cold, he felt stiff and achy and decided a hot shower was in order. Peggy was thinking the same, hoping that at this hour of the morning, the bath tub would be free and she could have a nice, long soak. Steve walked her down to her dorm, kissing her soundly before continuing on down the stairs.

He crept quietly into Hufflepuff, snatching his towel off the back of the door without going fully into his room—the rest of the guys would be asleep and he didn't want to let the light in and wake anybody up. He spent a long time in the shower, washing off the dirt and soot and blood, the smell of battle and the weight of exhaustion. His thoughts drifted back to Ethan and his last request—his parents would be notified, would probably be here later today, or tomorrow at the very latest. He should come up with something to say.

It took a while, standing there under the spray, but he finally formulated what he thought would be good to say, though he still wasn't quite sure how to put it all together. Maybe Ethan's parents wouldn't get here for a little bit, give him time to go out and ride around on his bike for a while and figure things out the rest of the way. Or maybe Bucky would know what to say. Bucky was good with words.

He crept back to his room, wet feet chilly on the stone floor, slipping inside as quietly as possible. Morris's bed was by the door, and it was empty, sheets in an untidy heap at the foot of the bed—he was an early riser, but he never made his bed. Dave and Jacques were still asleep, Jacques snoring loudly, but much to Steve's surprise, Bucky's bed was empty. Bucky didn't get up early unless he had to, and Steve hadn't seen him in the bathroom or the hallway. As he approached his closet, he was close enough to Bucky's bed to notice that not only was it empty, but it hadn't been slept in.

Steve got dressed quickly and decided to forgo his original plan of sitting in front of the fire in the common room with a book until breakfast to go out and look for Bucky. The haunted look on Bucky's face last night came back to him, along with the worry that he'd had to save for later. Something was wrong, and he should go and find out what it was.

After not finding him in the common room or the kitchen, Steve decided to head outside and try the training area instead of searching the whole castle. Bucky sought out the punching bags when something was bothering him, and while it was still awfully early in the morning for that, it was worth a look.

It didn't surprise him when he found Bucky down there, hands wrapped and pounding on a punching bag. What did surprise him was that Bucky was still in his uniform—he'd shed the blue coat when the work got too hot, but he was still in his combat boots and the rest of his gear, covered in last night's blood and dirt.

"Bucky?" he asked. Bucky continued his rhythmic punching, not hearing him over the noise. "Bucky!" he said a little louder. Nothing. "Bucky!"

Bucky whirled around, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face and washing clean streaks through the grime. "Hey, Steve," he grunted. He dashed a hand across his nose and nodded at Steve's arm. "You get fixed up alright?"

"What? Yeah, I'm fine, Bucky, what—"

"Colin okay?" he asked, cutting him off.

Steve nodded. "Rains is optimistic about saving the leg."

"Good." He turned back around to face the punching bag.

"Bucky, have you been out here all night?"

Bucky didn't answer, just grunted and started punching again.

"Buck, did you—"

"I heard you," he snapped. "I'm fine."

Steve frowned. "That's not what I asked."

"It's where you were headed," Bucky replied between punches. "Can you leave me to it?"

Steve's frown deepened. If he'd really been out here all night…yes, Bucky didn't like people talking to him when he did this, but he'd never done it for seven hours straight before either. Steve was suddenly a lot more worried and kind of surprised he was still on his feet.

"Buck, what's wrong?" he asked carefully. He always took missions hard when people died—they all did—but this was…this was more than that.

"I said I'm fine," he growled.

"Buck—"

"I'm fine! Go away."

Yeah, sure, because that sounded _totally_ fine. "No," Steve said, and he stepped forward and stuck out a hand, catching Bucky's fist before it could hit the bag again.

Bucky whirled around, fire burning in his eyes. "I said leave me the hell alone!"

"No," Steve said again gently, not letting go of Bucky's fist, though he loosened his grip when he looked down and saw that it was black with bruises under the tape that was slipping off. He looked back up at Bucky sadly. "Talk to me, Buck. What's wrong?"

Bucky glared at him for a long minute, shaking with what Steve thought at first was anger but then realized was exhaustion. Steve shifted his grip from Bucky's hand to his elbow, leading him over to the nearest bench where he dropped like a rock.

"Talk to me," he said again.

Bucky wasn't glaring anymore, but he didn't say anything, just reaching up and dashing a hand across his nose again. That hand was bruised and bloody too, the knuckles swollen and not all of the fingers bending quite the way they were supposed to.

"How long have you been out here?" Steve asked.

"Since Rains fixed my shoulder," Bucky said quietly.

"What's going on?" Steve asked. When Bucky didn't seem sure what to say, Steve prompted, "Was it Ethan? How he died, I mean?" Bucky had a thing about internal organs—and why shouldn't he, after what Zola had done to his? Injuries like that freaked him out more than others did, and that might explain what had him so shaken up.

Bucky huffed a humorless laugh. "Well, you're close," he said. Steve waited for him to go on, and after a minute, he did. "Ethan's dead, Steve. Ethan…" He shook his head. "Ethan _frickin'_ Green. I hated him."

"I know," he said softly.

"No," Bucky protested, a little bit of heat coming back into his voice. "No, you don't. You know I'm always gonna have beef with people who treat you the way he did, but he was worse than any of 'em. The stuff he said, the stuff he did…To you, mostly, but there was Gabe and Jim too, and hell, even Kelly. I never met anyone who was worse than him that wasn't Hydra." He was quiet for a minute, chewing on his lip and gathering his thoughts. "After Azzano…he apologized, and you forgave him, because you're a better man than I'm ever gonna be. I never did. Not even a little. I worked with him, and I saw he was trying to be better, but I never trusted him. Not really. I mean, I trusted him to do his job, sure, but that's different. This was just, as a person, you know? I kept waiting for him to slip up, to flip that new leaf back over to where it started."

Bucky stopped talking again, but Steve didn't say anything. He wasn't sure what to say, and he didn't think Bucky was done yet.

"I don't know why I did that," he said quietly. "Everything he did, he really did seem like he'd changed. I'd watch him with his team, you know, and there were guys on there who would have been just his kind of target before. But he just took care of 'em, the way he should have. Kept saving our lives too," he added with a huff. "That whole thing after Gray, and he saved my life once later, at that factory in the Netherlands. I don't know if I ever told you that. Took out a guy coming up on me up on the roof." He sighed. "After Azzano, he never did anything to prove he was the scumbag he was before. But I never believed it was for real."

Silence for a moment again, and then Bucky shoved himself up to his feet with a growl. "And then he went and saved Gabe's life!" he snapped, and he sounded like he was mad about that, but Steve knew that wasn't what it was. "He was one of the worst people I knew, Steve! The stuff he used to call Gabe and Jim…" He shook his head. "Ma would whip me six ways from Sunday for even _thinking_ words like that! The way he talked about you being half-blood and the…the things he said about your ma…" He snarled. "And I was always picking up the pieces after he went after you—there were times he hurt you so bad he could have killed you if there hadn't been magic to fix it! And then he says he's gonna change, and, what, I'm just supposed to buy that?! Hell, no! He was always gonna be that guy, that awful, terrible person, and then last night…" He inhaled sharply, the breath stuttering through his anger. "It was like, like he was trying to prove to me that I was wrong! He just went and threw himself into something he knew would probably kill him to save someone I _know_ he used to think wasn't good enough to lick the dirt off his shoes! Why…Why the _hell_ would he do that, Steve?!"

He snarled and swung around to face the punching bag again, driving a battered fist into the stained canvas with a howl. He punched it again, then again, the bag tearing with a sharp ripping sound as Steve jumped up to grab him and Bucky let out a yell that was only partially because of the pain.

Steve caught him and spun him, pinning Bucky's arms between them and tucking Bucky's head underneath his chin. Bucky didn't fight it, just collapsed against Steve with a miserable sigh. "Why would he do that?" he asked again, soft and sad this time, the words muffled as he spoke them into Steve's chest.

Steve didn't know what to say, so he just hugged him. He knew Bucky didn't like Ethan, but he knew he still would have taken his death hard, like he did everyone's. He just hadn't realized he would take it so personally, and he had no idea what to say to make it better.

"Why would he do that?" A whisper this time. Bucky sniffed dejectedly, his shoulders heaving once as he tried to force down a sob. "And why didn't I…" Another sniff, and Steve felt the hot moisture of tears start to soak through his shirt. "I never forgave him. I hated him and I never forgave him, and he's dead now and it's too late for—" His words caught in his throat and his shoulders heaved again, and Steve felt tears prickling in his own eyes.

"Aw, Buck," he whispered sadly.

"I was wrong, Stevie," he said miserably. "I was wrong, and there's never gonna be anything I can do to make it right."

Steve closed his eyes and sighed, a deep ache expanding in his chest. His heart hurt for his friend and the pain he had no way to take away; but also for himself, and those words of Bucky's that echoed Steve's own thoughts just a little too closely. "I'm sorry," he whispered, all he could say. That felt inadequate, but Bucky sighed deeply and Steve felt some of the tension in his shoulders loosen, and maybe he didn't need to say anything else.

Steve wasn't sure how long they stood there, but he held on until Bucky stopped crying. He pulled back a little to look at him then, and his eyes were red and weary, clean tracks from his tears running from the corners of his eyes through the dirt on his face down to his chin. He looked miserable and exhausted and Steve pulled him back in for another hug. He resisted the urge to tell him it would be okay—though it would be, eventually, it would do him no good to hear it now. "You need some rest," he said instead, and Bucky sniffed and nodded minutely.

One arm securely over his shoulder, Steve steered him back up to the castle, avoiding the few students who were out braving the early morning chill. Thankfully, most of their dorm was out at breakfast or still asleep, so there were no questioning eyes to greet them in the common room, though Steve doubted Bucky would have noticed them. He didn't think Bucky had enough left in him to stand up long enough for a shower, but he needed to get that blood and dirt and the smell of death that always lingered after a battle off of him. Steve grabbed one of the stools in the corner of the bathroom and set it down in one of the shower stalls, depositing Bucky down on top of it, uniform, boots and all. Bucky barely flinched when the spray of hot water hit him in the face. The water around his feet was swirling red and brown as the filth of battle rinsed off of his body and clothes, though he continued to sit still. Steve grabbed a bottle of shampoo and started lathering it into his hair, and after a minute or two, Bucky swatted his hands away and mumbled that he had it.

Steve hovered for a minute to make sure he could manage with the shape his hands were in, then nodded and went back to their room. He changed into something dry and not covered with blood, snot and tears, then made his way quickly to the kitchen. Bucky needed help with his hands, but he didn't need the long walk up to the infirmary or the scrutiny and questions he would face there. Fortunately, Willow was more than willing to help.

"Of course, Master Steve," she said. "Let Willow gather some things, and she will meet you in the dorm."

Steve thanked her and hurried back. Bucky was still in the shower, though he'd turned the water off and was just sitting there on the stool, unable to get up. Steve helped him up and dried him off as best he could. Back in their room, he undid all the buckles and buttons that Bucky hadn't been able to manage, then leaned him against the closet and went out into the hallway, trying to let him keep as much of his dignity as he could and peel the wet clothes off himself. With one hand on the closet, Bucky would be able to keep himself upright enough to finish drying off and to pull his pajamas on.

Steve came back in and helped him into bed, where he laid down and curled up on his side. A blink of mild surprise was all the reaction he gave to the sharp crack of magic that heralded Willow's arrival, though once he realized what she was there for, he looked up at Steve with a small, grateful nod.

Willow made no comments about how he had injured himself, merely clicked her tongue sympathetically and set straight to work. Now that he was horizontal, Bucky's eyes were already drifting shut, but she made him sit up just enough to drink some of her special tea. Bucky was tired enough to sleep, but on his own, he wouldn't sleep well right now, and Steve was grateful for her thoughtfulness.

"Thanks, Willow," Bucky whispered before falling asleep, and Willow smiled softly and patted him gently on the head. She worked in silence for a little while after that, muttering over his hands and rubbing various ointments on them. A straight night of punching would be tough on anyone's hands, but Steve was surprised that Bucky had been able to keep going at all, as bad as they looked—they were black and purple with bruises, knuckles swollen and split, and several fingers curled up at awkward, pained angles.

Under Willow's gentle ministrations, though, the bruises started to fade, split skin knitting back together and bones healing until his hands were whole again. She started wrapping them in bandages that had been soaked in something sweet-smelling, to help heal the rest of the pain, she said. "Something troubles Master Bucky?" she asked, shooting an inquisitive look up at Steve as she paused to tie off one of the bandages.

Steve nodded. "It was a rough mission last night."

"Mm," Willow nodded. "Students were killed?"

"Yeah."

She nodded again, moving Bucky's hands up to rest by his chest and pulling his blanket up over his shoulders. "His heart is very big, Master Bucky's," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "He worries much for many people." She turned and looked up at Steve, a sad smile on her face. "Master Steve is the same. To care so much, some would say is unwise—'tis easier to be hurt then. But to know this and still care much?" Her smile grew much warmer and she rested a little hand on Steve's, squeezing it gently. "Sirs is good men."

Steve swallowed down a sudden knot of emotion in his throat, feeling unexpectedly touched. A small smile curved up the corners of his mouth. "Thanks, Willow," he whispered.

She nodded, still smiling, and set to picking up her things. "Sir should sleep too," she said. "Willow knows a boy who has not slept when she sees one. But," she added. "Willow also knows Sir will not sleep while he watches over his friend." Steve blushed a little, and she grinned, knowing she had his number. "So, Willow will send food. Master Steve must eat, and he can watch and rest his soul while he does it. The body can rest tonight."

Steve chuckled a little at that.

"Master Bucky's hands are healing, but if they are still paining him when he wakes, Sir must send for Willow."

"I will," Steve promised. "Thank you for coming."

"Sir is most welcome," she said warmly. "Willow is glad to help."

She left, and Steve moved over to his own bed. Not to sleep, but it was a more comfortable place to sit and think. Bucky should sleep for a long time, and Steve hoped he felt better when he woke up. Some good, long sleep wouldn't get rid of the pain, but it would dull the edges, make it less raw. He still didn't know if there was anything he could say to Bucky to help, but helping didn't always mean saying things. Sometimes it just meant being there.

He sat there for a long time, nibbling absently at the food Willow had brought him. His mind was too restless to do anything productive—homework sat unremembered in his school bag under his bed, and the words that had been swirling around in his head trying to form into something to say to Ethan's parents continued to flit around chaotically, never landing anywhere. He knew Peggy had been right—he'd done as well as he could have by Ethan, but the guilt, the 'what if's' still hung heavy. He watched Bucky sleep pensively, thinking over his words. Bucky had never liked Ethan, true, but Steve wondered if maybe he wasn't being too hard on himself—he knew guilt sometimes made things darker and heavier than they should have been. But, then, sometimes, they were just that heavy. And that knowledge that it was too late to do anything about it either way, that was like a punch in the gut. Steve could sympathize with that all too well.

Eventually, feeling restless and tired and jittery, Steve pulled out his sketchbook and pencils so he'd have something to do with his hands. He lost himself for a while in the lines on the paper, completing their shapes and shading without really thinking about them. It was some hours later that he looked down, his hands smudged with graphite, and really looked at what he'd drawn.

He'd filled several pages. Some were little things—he'd drawn the untidy pile of shoes under Dave's bed; Bucky's towel hanging off the bedpost and the little drips of water under it on the floor; the light glinting on the handle of his closet; and his own foot, including the pattern on his sock and the hole over the big toe. Some took up a whole page—he'd done a few of Bucky sleeping; the folds of the blanket piled up around him; one of just his hands, bandaged and tucked up in front of him; and one of his face, peaceful under the tangled mess that his hair always worked itself into when he slept with it wet. There were some sketches of things he'd just pulled out of his memory too—Peggy smiling and wearing the scarf he'd made her for Christmas last year; Becky writing in her little notebook; the flowers in the box outside the living room window that Mrs. Barnes always watered; the handlebars of his motorcycle.

There was a page in the middle of them all that surprised him. He hadn't been aware of it while he was doing it, but he'd drawn a portrait of Ethan—not as he'd last seen him, dying and in pain, but walking forward with a reassuring smile on his face, holding out one hand. Steve stared at it for several minutes before he realized that was another memory. It was some factory mission—he didn't remember which one—but there had been a kid there, maybe nine or ten. Not a soldier, just someone who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and gotten caught up in one of the sweeps Hydra did when they needed more forced labor. Ethan had gotten the kid out and looked after him, promising him that it was all going to be okay now, that it was time to go home. Steve smiled sadly and scribbled a little notation down in the corner of the page. 'Ethan Green, 89th. Rescue and Extraction. 1945'.

Bucky woke up halfway through the afternoon. He still looked exhausted, but a little more settled. He blushed a little when he looked down at his hands, unwrapping the bandages gingerly.

"Sorry about this morning," he said.

"It's okay," Steve replied. "I get it." Bucky arched an inquisitive eyebrow and Steve lifted one side of his mouth up in a half smile. "I should've…There's stuff it's too late for me to say too."

Bucky nodded, a ghost of an appreciative smile for the understanding and lack of judgement flitting across his face.

"Do they still hurt?" Steve asked, nodding at his hands.

Bucky curled and uncurled his fingers experimentally. "No. A little stiff, but they're fine."

"Good."

"Thank you." Steve knew he meant for more than just getting his hands fixed up.

"Anytime," he told him warmly.

* * *

The fiery anger and the suffocating guilt that Bucky had tried to punch away last night was gone, but he didn't feel…he wasn't okay. He didn't feel much of anything right now, really, still too tired for any depth of emotion, even after sleeping all day. Compared to drowning in all the things he should have done, though, that numb feeling was preferable, at least for now. There was plenty of time for self-reproach later.

Willow came back to check on him, and he managed a smile for the little elf and her cheerful kindness, thanking her again for her help. It was still a little while until dinner when she left, and Bucky glanced over uncertainly to where Steve was still sitting on his bed writing something. This whole thing wasn't over yet, he knew, but he didn't think he could handle any more baring of his soul today.

Steve looked up, and there was a small smile in his eyes as he read Bucky's expression. "I'm not waiting around to drag anything out of you, Buck," he said. "You have more to work out, we can do it when you're ready. I'm just here." Reminding Bucky he wasn't alone. A knot of grateful emotion welled up in Bucky's throat and he nodded.

"Thanks, Stevie."

Steve went back to whatever he was writing and Bucky pulled one of his library books off his nightstand. He didn't know that he read an awful lot of it by the time they went to dinner, but it took his mind off things for a little while. Becky was waiting for them when they got there, and Bucky felt another quick stab of guilt at the realization that while she may have known they'd made it back alive, she hadn't seen him or Steve since they'd come back yesterday. She didn't look mad, though, just smiled and hugged them both. Her arms lingered around Bucky, and she looked up at him curiously.

"You okay, Jay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Rough mission."

"What happened?" she wondered.

Bucky swallowed down the knot in his throat before it had time to build. "I don't really want to talk about it right now."

She studied him for a few seconds, then nodded. "Okay." She smiled. "You want to hear what happened in Charms yesterday?" When he nodded, she launched into an elaborate retelling of yesterday's events, which seemed to center around some sort of relationship drama between two of the Gryffindor Third-Years that had evolved into a full-blown incident in class involving furniture flying around the room and several parakeets. She was exaggerated enough in her story-telling that Bucky could tell what she was trying to do, and he appreciated it, finding himself laughing along at the ridiculous tale that was unfolding. Steve laughed so hard that orange juice came shooting out of his nose, eliciting cackles of disgusted glee from Becky.

He went to bed early that night, still tired enough that he slept well. Ethan's parents were there the next morning, and there was a small memorial service out on the grounds for him and for the others they'd lost that night. Bucky had been to far more of these things than he cared to count, and though the repeated sentiments of sorrow should have started ringing hollow by this point, they didn't. He stared out over the patch of grass on a little knoll above the lake, allowing his mind to wander enough to keep from crying in front of all these people. Of the students who had been killed in combat, none of them had been buried at Hogwarts—their parents all took them home—but there was a little set of memorial markers clustered there in the grass. They were simple stone panels, just a name and a date and a short inscription. Arthur's was in the back, a little weathered but still easy to read. Ethan's was new, so clean and smooth that the sun was glaring off the top of it, obscuring part of his name. It would dull in time, just like the guilt that had started stabbing daggers into Bucky's stomach again.

He wondered when that would be. He didn't think he deserved for it to be any time soon.

After the funeral, Steve got up to go talk to the Greens. He told Bucky that it was alright if he stayed behind, but Bucky shook his head and stood up with him. He should talk to them too, and he shouldn't make Steve do it alone. Once they were face to face, Bucky found he couldn't do much more than tell them that he was sorry. Steve talked a little while longer, and it was nice, what he said. He told them about how Ethan had saved their lives, and a couple of other nice things about him. Bucky nodded along where he could, hoping that made up for his own lack of words. Steve also made sure to assure them that Ethan had died heroically, and that he had gone out quickly and without suffering. A weight seemed to lift off his mother's shoulders when he said that, and Bucky wondered how many times Steve had had to rehearse those words to be able to say them convincingly.

They left and Steve sagged down, his shoulders slumping. "I just lied to a grieving mother," he said, a little catch in his voice. "What the hell kind of man does that make me?"

Bucky slung an arm over his shoulders. "A kind one," he said. Steve looked up at him and Bucky smiled sadly.

Steve nodded, and they just stood there for a minute, watching the crowd disperse. "I think I need to get out for a little while," Steve sighed. "If I go out and ride around, will you…"

"I'm not gonna punch anything," Bucky said, knowing what Steve was worried about. He nodded towards the garage. "Go clear your head."

Steve nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, walking off to get his bike and skirting around the lingering groups of people. Bucky looked back at the stones, taking a few steps closer to them. A cloud had drifted in front of the sun, cutting off the glare on Ethan's stone. "I'm sorry," Bucky said, feeling a little foolish talking to a rock but needing to get the words out. "I was wrong about you. You were alright." He sighed and looked around, catching sight of Gabe walking back to the castle, still limping a little, with one arm over Jacques' shoulders. There were more than enough stones out here already, and there could have been one more today—one with the name 'Gabriel Jones' carved on it. Bucky turned back to Ethan's stone, moisture prickling in his eyes. "Thank you," he said softly.

He took his time walking back to the castle. Somewhat to his surprise, Peggy was sitting on the steps leading up to the front door, getting to her feet when he got closer. "There you are," she said, clearly having been waiting for him. She smiled. "Fancy a walk?" Her smile got a little wider when he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "We don't have to talk about Ethan," she said. "But you were cooped up inside all day yesterday, and if you're going to keep brooding, you can at least do it in the sunlight for a bit."

She took his hand and started leading him away from the castle. "Peggy," he started.

"I wasn't asking," she replied.

He sighed, looking back over his shoulder at the castle. Going back inside the dark, heavy stone walls suddenly seemed like a foreboding prospect. He shoved his hands into his pockets and fell into step beside her. "Alright," he said.

They walked down toward the front gates, and, yeah, they were sort of supposed to ask before going off campus, but a change of scenery sounded nice. Peggy asked him a few questions about if his shoulder was still hurting, or how Becky was doing, and things like that, but they were mostly quiet until they passed the gates and got on the road down to Hogsmeade.

Bucky looked over at Peggy—she'd said they didn't have to talk about Ethan, and maybe that was just because of the funeral, but he wondered how much she knew. "Did Steve tell you about yesterday?" he asked. Not that he thought Steve would have shared the personal details of Bucky's breakdown or anything—he just wondered how much he was going to have to explain if he was going to talk about this with her too. He didn't think he had the energy to go into all of it again.

She shook her head. "No. That's between you and him," she said. "I just know your history with Ethan, and I imagine that makes this whole ordeal rather more complicated."

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "How do I…" He didn't really want to get into all the messy details again, but he was curious to know what Peggy thought. She always had good advice. "There's no way to square things up between me and him now," he said, and it hurt, being that blunt, but it was true. What to do with that was what he was trying to figure out. "What do I do now?"

She was quiet for a minute, considering her answer. "You're right," she said at last. "There isn't anything you can do now as far as Ethan goes." She didn't sound like she was blaming him, for which Bucky was grateful. "That doesn't mean you're a bad person, though."

Bucky didn't say anything, but she must have read something in his expression to make her feel the need to elaborate.

"It doesn't," she insisted. "Everyone has people they don't like. I highly doubt I'm stretching anything to go a step farther and say everyone has someone they hate," she added. "And that doesn't make you bad, that makes you, you know, normal."

Bucky smiled a bit at that.

"And I think feeling guilty about not liking him now that he's dead, like you are now, I think that's normal too. Actually, I'm rather inclined to think it's more of an indicator of you being a good person than anything else." Bucky arched a questioning eyebrow and she smiled. "A good person realizes a mistake they've made and wants to fix it. A bad person wouldn't care," she explained.

"And I think that's what you need to do," she went on, reaching over and snapping a twig off a nearby branch, peeling the bark off thoughtfully as she continued. "I think you need to look at this, and, yes, that's probably going to be unpleasant, but look at it and see what you can do to make sure you don't make the same mistake next time." She tossed the twig aside and looked up at him with a soft smile. "And acknowledging what you did wrong and learning from it…" she shrugged. "It doesn't fix everything between you and Ethan, but maybe it fixes a bit."

Bucky nodded. "I think I could do that," he said thoughtfully. He smiled down at her warmly. "You're a wise woman, Peggy Carter."

"I am," she agreed with a grin. "You think you would have cottoned on to that by now."

That made him laugh, and she chuckled along with him. "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked, nodding in the direction of The Three Broomsticks as they entered the village.

"I wouldn't say no to that," she said with a smile.

They went in and sat down, and they somehow found themselves talking about pie. Apparently, Steve had told her Bucky could bake. Steve showed up a little while later, dusty from his ride but looking more settled than he had at the funeral, and joined in their discussion.

"I thought," Steve protested when Peggy started angling for Bucky to make her a pie for her birthday. "That I was going to make you a cake."

"I can have both," Peggy argued. "Dessert is sort of the point of the birthday celebration."

"She's got a point, Stevie," Bucky agreed.

"Yeah, alright," Steve conceded. "So that means you're gonna make me a pie for my birthday too, right?"

"Your birthday is the fourth of July. Everyone's making pies for your birthday," Bucky pointed out. Steve just kept looking at him and Bucky shook his head. "Fine, I'll make you a pie for your birthday. Strawberry, right?"

Steve grinned. "That's the best kind."

Bucky shook his head, still smiling. "So, come March 10th, I'm getting a cake from you, then, right?"

"It's only fair," Steve chuckled.

All this talk of dessert was making Bucky hungry, and they ended up ordering some pie while they kept talking. This was nice, just sitting here talking about pie and homework and sports and other regular stuff. It made the ache in Bucky's chest lessen somewhat, reminding him that things were going to be okay. One day, the war was going to be over, and they could all go home. They could have happy, normal moments like this all the time.

Over the next couple of weeks, the ache in his chest continued to dull into something more manageable. He tried to take Peggy's advice to heart, not dwelling on his failure, but spending enough time examining it to try to see how he could do it better. It helped too, that Steve was struggling with the same thing. They did talk about it some more, the two of them, usually late at night in front of the common room fire. And when they didn't talk about it, just having someone there who knew what you were going through helped a lot. He talked about it with Vicki too in his letters, and she was sympathetic and had more or less the same advice that Peggy did, although in different words. How was it that girls were so smart about this kind of thing?

The evening after Ethan's funeral, he and Steve had gone up to the infirmary to check in with Colin. He was feeling better, and had dialed back on the pain meds enough to hold a coherent conversation. He appreciated Steve's report on his team, and asked that if the Greens were still around, if there was a chance they could come up and talk with him, since he'd missed the funeral. He also seemed reasonably stoic about the fact that Nurse Rains hadn't been able to save his leg after all.

"Aye," he said, waving a hand down at the cluster of bandages wrapped around where his left leg now stopped just above the knee. "There was some sort lingering magic she couldn't clear out. Had to take it off at the knee to stop it spreading any further up." He clicked his tongue irritably. "That Coleman was a clever wee bugger, I'll give him that."

"Are you gonna be okay?" Bucky asked. Colin had always been fairly stoic about getting injured, but the fact that he was treating an entire missing limb as just a minor annoyance seemed to be taking it a bit far.

"Oh, aye," he said. He grinned. "Howard's already got something in the works for a replacement—something he says will work well enough I can still get out and fight. He's a bit hard to understand when he gets going like that, to be honest, but the bonnie lass that works for him explained it a bit better."

Steve chuckled, and Bucky swallowed down a smile of his own. He wasn't sure how Samantha would take being called a 'bonnie lass', but it was probably just as well she hadn't heard it.

"Well," Steve said. "You take whatever time you need getting back on your feet. I mean, foot. I mean…" His face was going bright red, and Bucky and Colin laughed.

"It'll be 'feet' by the time it's over, don't worry," Colin said with a smile. "And hopefully in time for our next mission too, although Jamie will probably have to take over training for a bit." He turned to look at Bucky, looking a bit more serious. "If you find the time, would you mind having a word with wee Alfie? I sent him off to help cover the prisoners escaping, so he wasn't with me when I got hit, and he still thinks it's his fault I got hurt. He'll no' listen to me when I tell him it isn't, but you've a way with the lad, so…"

"Sure," Bucky said. "I'll talk to him."

"Thanks."

Things were starting to look up on news from the front—particularly in the non-magical side of the war. There was hopeful talk of Hitler being defeated before the end of the year, and the battle with Grindelwald was winning some major victories too. It was going well enough that Phillips was able to pull in more resources from the Ministry to aid their hunt for Schmidt and the Valkyrie. He seemed less optimistic about the Hydra side of the war coming to an end, but it was hard to judge from that—Bucky didn't know that he'd ever heard Phillips be optimistic about anything.

"Hey, Jay?" Becky asked him one day at lunch.

"Yeah?"

"If you're not doing soldier stuff this afternoon, could you help me with some of my homework?"

"Sure," he said. "More Transfiguration stuff?"

"No, it's Defense Against the Dark Arts. We're practicing Stunning spells, and I'm not doing it right, and Esther won't practice with me anymore," she pouted.

"Why not?" he wondered. "Did you guys have a fight or something?" Based on the stories his sister told, life as a thirteen-year-old girl was pretty dramatic, but he didn't think he'd ever seen the two of them get mad enough to stop speaking to each other.

"Oh, no," Becky said. "I'm just not doing it right, and it throws her into the wall and she's tired of it."

Bucky laughed. "Yeah, that really makes me want to let you practice on me."

"You're bigger than her; you wouldn't go as far," she pointed out.

"You're not good at this," he said, still chuckling.

"Come on, Jay, please?" she begged, slumping theatrically onto his shoulder.

"Of course, I'll help you," he told her, grabbing her and poking her side and making her giggle. Which was how he found himself in one of the empty classrooms after school letting his little sister throw spells at him.

"Okay," he said. "Show me what you've got." She studied her wand for a moment, going over the wrist movements in her head, and Bucky was reminded of the days when he and Steve used to find an empty room and practice spells until Steve could pull them off.

"_Stupefy_!" Becky said, pointing her wand at him, and the next thing Bucky knew, he was skidding across the floor and crashing into a desk.

"Ow," he complained. Yeah, that would happen when he practiced with Steve too. "Good night, kiddo, you weren't kidding," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "But if you're trying to knock people out, throwing 'em into a wall would do it."

"I'm sorry, Jay!" she exclaimed, hurrying over. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, climbing to his feet. "You didn't break anything."

"Sorry," she said sheepishly.

"I can see why Esther would be tired of that," he said, smiling to let her know he wasn't mad.

"When it happens to Esther, she usually goes straight back," Becky said. "So we try to aim at, like, a couch or a pile of pillows or something. You went way off to the side."

"Yeah, well, you yanked your wand off to the left," he said. "Keep it straight, first of all. Do it again, and I'm going to watch your hand, see if you're moving it right." He moved so that if she flung him back again, hopefully it would be out of range of any more furniture.

"Okay." She tried it again and he went straight this time, but still flew back a few feet.

"Okay," he said, getting up again. "Your hand movement is way too enthusiastic. Try it like this." He took out his wand and demonstrated the correct motion.

She practiced a couple of times, whispering the spell to herself as she tried to get her hand to move right. Then she must have done it right, because Bucky was waking up on the floor and something wet was dripping into his face.

"Stop that," he complained, swatting at the air.

The dripping stopped. "Are you awake?" Becky asked.

He cracked one eye open to glare at her. "No."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He sat up. His shirt was drenched with water that smelled vaguely of old leaves. "Why were you dumping water on me?"

"To get you to wake up," she said, setting aside the flower vase she'd evidently been using to do so. "I tried poking you and shaking you and stuff and it didn't work." She grimaced. "I was starting to get scared I'd hurt you."

He smiled and looped an arm around her. "Nah, I'm alright. It's a spell to knock people out—usually takes a few minutes to come around afterwards is all."

"Are you sure you're alright?" she persisted.

"I'm fine."

Becky was ready to stop, but Bucky insisted she try it a couple more times just make sure she really had it down. "It's a good spell to know," he told her as they left. "I mean, it helps a lot, out in combat and everything like that, but it's a good safety kind of spell. In case anybody starts giving you trouble." She grinned as he said that, and he pointed a warning finger at her. "And that doesn't mean me. You start sneaking around trying to Stun me, don't think I won't get you for it."

"I wasn't thinking that," she protested.

Bucky snorted. "Sure. You're a worse liar than Steve is, you know that?"

She giggled. "Well, I wasn't thinking I'd do it _now_," she amended. "I would wait until we got home or something. You know, when you weren't expecting it."

"You are underage, young lady, and you don't get to do magic at home," he reminded her.

"Well, you would be unconscious if I did it and you wouldn't be able to stop me," she pointed out.

Bucky laughed and slung an arm over her shoulder. "That's true. But I would wake up eventually. And I know more magic than you."

She giggled and tried to wriggle out from under his arm. "You'd have to catch me first."

He tightened his grip and she squeaked. "Like this?" he asked, laughing as she tried ineffectually to escape.

"Lemme go!" she squealed, poking him in the side where she knew he was ticklish.

"You're not getting away that easy," he told her, switching his grip around and flipping her up over his shoulder. If they were at home, he would have flung her down onto the sofa, but seeing as they were in a hallway with a stone floor, he just spun her around in a circle and set her back down on her feet. "You should know by now that if I'm after you, you're never gonna get away."

She smiled and poked him in the side again, then hugged him tightly. "Thanks for your help, Jay," she told him.

"Anytime, Munchkin," he replied, planting a quick kiss on top of her head.

"Why are you all wet?" Steve asked when he went back to the dorm, nodding at the front of Bucky's shirt.

"Because Becky doesn't know any rejuvenation spells yet," he said, kicking his shoes off and flopping down on his bed.

"What?"

He explained what he'd been doing all afternoon, adding that Steve might want to be on the lookout for sneak attack Stunning spells from Becky.

"Good to know."

Bucky fished his notebook out from under his bed and got back to work on his Herbology essay. He'd been planning on working on it during his free period this morning, but he'd run into Alfie in the hallway and decided that was as good a time as any to have a talk about Colin. The little guy really did remind him of Steve—and fortunately, he'd already had the people-getting-hurt-isn't-your-fault talk with Steve a while back, so he knew the right kinds of things to say. Alfie had looked somewhat more encouraged by the time they were done.

"How do you spell 'narcissus'?" he asked Steve, frowning down at his parchment.

"With a 'c', two 's's' and another 's'," Steve replied. "Are you still working on that toxin essay? It's due tomorrow."

"I know. I've only got a paragraph left," he said. "And don't lecture me about stuff that's due tomorrow when you haven't started your Care of Magical Creatures questions yet."

"Crap!" Steve exclaimed. "I forgot about that. Wait, how did you know I hadn't done it?"

Bucky looked up with a smirk. "I know everything, Stevie." He chuckled for a minute as Steve dug through his backpack, then pulled a textbook out of his own bag and tossed it over to Steve's bed. "And the book's been in my bag for the past two days," he added. "I've been waiting for you to ask for it." Steve scowled and threw a wadded-up piece of parchment at him before opening the book and getting started.

A few days later they ran into Colin down in the dining room, finally freed of the infirmary and proudly showing off the artificial leg Howard had made for him. It was a good deal more elaborate than Marsh's had been—shiny metal, about the size Bucky imagined the bone inside the leg would be, with a joint at the knee and another at the ankle that allowed for an almost natural range of movement. The foot was a little creepy-looking—instead of being shaped like a human foot, or even a shoe, it resembled nothing so much as a large bird claw, but there were little joints along each digit too, and it was supposed to help with grip and traction.

"That's really something," Dugan said, sounding impressed.

Jacques let out an appreciative whistle, leaning in to rap his knuckles against the polished surface.

"Can I see how it's attached?" Jim wondered, which struck Bucky as a rather personal question, but Colin didn't seem to mind and rolled his pants up past the knee to show him.

Bucky couldn't help wincing at the angry-looking ring of scar tissue surrounding the seam. Colin caught his look and chuckled. "Aye, it does hurt a bit," he conceded. "But not near so bad as it looks like it should. I reckon I'll get used to it."

"Can you move okay?" Steve asked.

Colin dropped the leg of his pants and stepped back to walk in a ring around them. A faint clanking, hissing sound came from the joints as he did so. "I'll not be sneaking up on anyone anytime soon," he said with a smile. "But it works just fine. Rains won't let me run until the seam heals up a bit more, but I can move well enough."

"I'm glad," Steve said, clapping him on the shoulder, though his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. Bucky got where he was coming from. Colin was still alive, but he was one more person Hydra wasn't letting out of this war unscathed.

Things continued to go quietly on the war front for a little while, and Bucky was glad of that. It meant none of them were out there getting hurt, and it gave them all time to study and to enjoy the first hints of spring that were starting to pop up. Now that the sun was staying out for most of the afternoon, the younger kids had started up their Quidditch league again. Some of the older, former players gave them a hard time about waiting for good weather, but as far as Bucky was concerned, there was something to be said about playing in the sun. Flying around in the rain with your fingers so cold you could barely hold on to your broom wasn't really his idea of a good time.

He and Peggy were both helping to coach Becky's team this term—the girls were determined to come out on top at the end of the year, and they were good, but there was a Fourth-Year team that had been dominating the scoreboards all year. They made a pretty good coaching team. Peggy took the Beaters through moves and helped Esther work on her speed for Seeking, and Bucky coached the Chasers and showed Esther how to roll and avoid hits. Steve was still pretty awful on a broom, but he had great aim, so he would throw things at Becky to help her practice Keeping while the rest of the team worked with Peggy and Bucky.

"Marie!" Peggy barked. "Eyes on the ball!"

Marie blushed and turned her attention back to the Quaffle and away from the goalposts, where Steve was hurling the spare Quaffles in Becky's direction with honed precision. "Sorry!" Marie called back. She looked over at Eve, who was hovering on her broom next to her. "I don't know how she expects me to concentrate when he's over there doing that," she said, lowering her voice. "Have you _seen_ the muscles in his arms?"

Eve sighed dreamily. "He's like a Greek statue."

Bucky had been floating close enough to hear that exchange, and he snorted and laughed so hard he almost fell off his broom.

"Something you'd like to share with the class, Bucky?" Peggy asked, flying back over.

"Nope," he said, shaking his head and still chuckling.

They kept practicing, and the girls really were getting a lot better. They worked hard, repeating moves over and over until they were sure they had them right. They liked what Bucky had told them about how the Howling Commandos spent time working together before they went out anywhere, getting familiar with how the rest of their team moved, and so they spent some time doing that too, flying around in formation, tossing the ball back and forth and watching each other closely. They were pretty good, and they had a lot of determination. Bucky thought they just might have a chance at knocking out the top team before the end of the year.

It was still early enough in the year to be chilly, but he'd worked up a pretty good sweat flying and rolling and throwing, and he paused during a break to tug the bottom of his shirt up and wipe his face off. Appearing by his side so fast he could have sworn she'd apparated was Becky, glaring unhappily. "We talked about you taking your shirt off in front of my friends," she said.

"I'm not taking it off, I'm just wiping my face," he said, rolling his eyes. He waved the sweaty part of the shirt at her and she backed up a few inches. "See? Besides," he added, when she continued to glare suspiciously. "It wouldn't be the worst thing, would it? Abs like these, you know someone would appreciate them," he said with a grin, patting his stomach.

"Don't think I don't know the spell to sic the Bludger on you," Becky scowled. " 'Cause I'll do it."

Bucky laughed and shooed her back down to keep practicing with Steve, feeling her shooting him dirty looks every time he looked down at her end of the field.

After practice, they all walked up to the castle, still chatting happily about practice. Becky appeared to have forgiven him, since he had made no further moves that might be construed as removing his shirt, though Bucky did make sure to give her a hug and squeeze her up against the damp front of his shirt.

"Gross!" Becky complained, shoving him away.

"Hey, I'm not the only one who needs a shower," he told her with a pointed look.

She scowled, but then giggled as she caught sight of Eleanor and Moira, who were watching with fascination as Steve and Peggy walked up the path behind all the rest of them, Steve's arm over Peggy's shoulders.

"I would never let my boyfriend hug me if I was all dirty and sweaty like that," Moira said, sounding half-appalled, half-envious.

"It means he really loves her," Eleanor said sagely. "If he doesn't care about all that."

Steve leaned in and kissed Peggy, and the girls both gasped, then let out a breathless little, "aaaww!"

Becky covered her mouth with her hand in an attempt to hide her snort of laughter. Bucky was having a hard time not laughing himself. "I don't know what it is about you and Steve that make all the girls so nuts," Becky said, shaking her head as Moira and Eleanor left, casting shy smiles at Bucky as they passed.

"You don't think we're handsome?" Bucky asked with a smile.

"I don't know; I guess," Becky said. "But, Jay, you're almost eighteen. Eleanor is thirteen. It's not like you'd ever go out with her." Bucky inclined his head in agreement and Becky continued. "I'm just saying, there's plenty of cute boys in our year. Why do they have to get all lovey-dovey over you two when it's never gonna go anywhere?"

Bucky smiled. "And it's weird because they're being like that about your brother?"

"Yes!" she agreed emphatically. "It's embarrassing."

Bucky looped an arm over her shoulder. "Tell you what. How about I stop teasing you about it? Will that help?"

Becky narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You wouldn't do that."

"I would," he told her, still smiling but no longer joking. "I've known you for almost fourteen years, Munchkin. I know which buttons I can keep pushing and which ones I need to lay off. And if it bothers you that much, I'll stop."

She looked at him a moment longer, then smiled softly. "Thanks, Jay."

He tugged her over for a hug and ruffled her hair. "You're welcome." He grinned a little wider, letting a playful tone creep back into his voice. "I am a nice big brother."

He was expecting a joke in reply, and was touched when, instead, she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. "Yeah, you are," she said warmly.

It was a few days later, the last day of February, when Peggy called them in for an unexpected mission briefing. Bucky assumed it was another factory run since he hadn't heard of anything else in the works, so he was surprised when they got there and no one from the 89th or 107th was there. Even more surprising was the fact that Phillips was leading the briefing instead of Peggy, and if Bucky hadn't known better, he would have sworn that was excitement he was feeling from him—though he still looked gruff as ever.

"I know it's short notice," Phillips said once they were all seated. "But we just came across some intel that couldn't wait. We know where Zola is."

The room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

"Hydra's head scientist?" Steve asked at last. "_That_ Zola?" While everyone was familiar with the little scientist, Arnim Zola had proved to be as hard to find as Johann Schmidt.

"That Zola," Phillips confirmed.

"Where is he?" Bucky demanded. The chance to apprehend the author of so many of his nightmares sent a thrill racing through Bucky's body so powerful he was surprised he didn't combust.

"He's going to be moving through the Alps," Phillips said, pointing to a map behind him. "Hydra has something they need to move that can't be moved by magic, and so Dr. Zola is playing babysitter for the journey. You boys think you can keep him from reaching his destination?"

"Hell, yes," Bucky growled. Phillips ignored the breach in protocol.

"Say the word, Sir," Steve said, vibrating with the same energy Bucky felt coursing through his own body. Nobody could hate Zola as much as Bucky did, but Steve was sure in the running.

"The word is said, Captain," Phillips replied. "You boys have a train to catch."

* * *

.


	81. The Train

_Not much to say about this one. We've finally come to the train. Here it goes.  
_

* * *

Steve was standing on a rocky outcropping somewhere high in the Swiss Alps, squinting against the biting wind and feeling little shivers running down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. A snow-covered train track curved around the mountainside across the gorge below them, and in a few minutes, a train bearing Dr. Arnim Zola would come speeding by. Zola. The man who had tortured and nearly killed Bucky. The man Steve had defied Phillips' orders to stop. In a few minutes, he and Steve would be face to face for the first time. And then Arnim Zola wasn't going to cause anybody any trouble ever again.

In front of him, a long, thick cable stretched out into space, clamped into the rocks on the mountain opposite, several yards above the train tracks. The train that would soon be here was warded to the teeth, prohibiting any sort of magical entry. Their plan of attack, therefore, was entirely physical—zipping across the line and dropping onto the top of the train. If they couldn't find a door or a window once they were on top, they had explosives, and would just blow a hole in the roof.

The problem was, the train was moving fast enough that there wasn't a big enough window for the whole team to get across and land on top. They'd done a lot of math, and only three of them were going to make it. Steve and Bucky were, obviously, two of them. Gabe was going too—he was the only one who spoke and read German well enough to be able to take over the controls of the train once they made it to the front. The rest of the team was going to stay back on the ledge, monitoring communications, and then apparating to join them once they had control of the train and were able to take the wards down.

Steve listened with half an ear to Jim and Gabe fiddling with the radio behind him, most of his focus on the cable in front of him and gauging things like wind speed and the distance across to the other side. He turned at the sound of Bucky's boots crunching on the snow as he came up beside him.

"You remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?" Bucky asked, staring across the empty space they had to travel.

"Yeah, and I threw up?" Steve replied.

Bucky pulled his eyes away from the gorge and looked at Steve, one eyebrow raised in amusement. "This isn't payback, is it?"

Steve smiled. It _was_ a dizzying view. "Now, why would I do that?"

"We were right," Gabe said from behind him, making both of them snap their heads around to where Gabe and Jim were crouched by the radio. "Dr. Zola's on the train. We just heard him give the engineer permission to open up the throttle." Not that they had doubted Phillips' intel, but before you jumped off a mountain onto a moving train, it was generally a good idea to confirm the guy you were after was going to be there.

Steve looked at Bucky and they both gave each other a nod. This was it. Steve pulled his helmet on, tightening the strap under his chin before turning to help Jacques with the handlebars and cables. Monty was standing on the far end of the ledge with a pair of binoculars, watching for when the train came around the bend. "Let's get going," he said, turning back to face the rest of them. "Because they're moving like the devil."

Steve nodded again, flinging the straps of his handle over the cable and giving it a tug to make sure they were secure. "We've only got about a ten second window," he reminded Bucky and Gabe. "We miss that window; we're bugs on a windshield."

"Mind the gap," Monty said with a grin.

"Better get moving, bugs!" Dugan said, his eyes darting over to the oncoming train.

Steve gripped his handlebars tighter, drawing in a deep breath and keeping his eyes on the descent in front of him.

"Maintenent!" Jacques called, and Steve jumped, swinging out into space. The train wasn't actually there yet, and he shushed the little panicked voice inside him that was screaming that he was going to slam into the side of the mountain. The wind was whipping past his head so fast he couldn't hear anything, but he felt the cable bounce as Bucky jumped after him, then again as Gabe followed. As he got closer to the mountain, he could feel vibrations travelling up the cable, heralding the arrival of the train.

The sleek black engine zoomed into view under his feet, and Steve waited, counting train cars zipping by below him, until he was low enough he knew he could stick the landing. He dropped, crouching almost flat to absorb the way it jarred his knees as he landed and to keep his center of balance low. For a moment, he didn't move, making sure his position was steady and getting a feel for the speed of the wind. He looked back behind him, seeing Bucky and Gabe doing the same, and let out a little breath of relief that they'd both landed safely. The train was going so fast, the rest of his team on the ledge was already out of sight.

Staying low to the surface of the train, he crept forward, eyes searching the sides for an entry on the sides or a window in the top. He found a ladder a couple cars up and carefully maneuvered himself down to the side, climbing down and sliding open the door. He jumped in, wand at the ready and searching for threats as he waited for Bucky. The two of them were going to come up from the back while Gabe made his way up to the front—they could draw the fire and give Gabe a chance to stop the train sooner.

Bucky swung inside and pointed his wand at the door, sliding it shut again. As the door slammed closed, it got a lot warmer and quieter inside the car. Aside from the two of them, there didn't seem to be anyone else there. They looked at each other warily—with as warded as the train was, their entry should not have gone undetected. Steve met Bucky's eyes. They were waiting for them. Bucky nodded his agreement, sliding several steps back and nodding for Steve to go forward. They were going to need to spread out and go slow.

After making sure this car was clear and Bucky secured the door behind them, Steve moved forward into the next compartment. This one had boxes lining the walls and a narrow shelf running down the middle, stacked with assorted gear. He moved slowly, checking behind each pile of boxes and peering around the shelves, sensing Bucky doing the same behind him. At the end, he nodded to Bucky and stepped through the first door into the narrow gangway, and then through the next door on into the next compartment.

He was only a few steps in when he felt a snap of magic and heard the door slam shut behind him. He spun around just in time to see the second door of the gangway slam shut with Bucky still on the other side, soldiers in Hydra black coming up behind him. Steve banged on the door, searching for a release mechanism, when he heard over the rattle of the train the faint hum of a Tesseract gun powering up behind him. He flung himself down and to the side as a blast of energy sailed over his head, blasting a smoking crater in the wall down by the floor.

Rapid bursts of gunfire from the compartment behind him told him that Bucky was still alive and fighting, and that was good, and he pulled his shield up in front of him and started firing spells at the advancing Hydra soldier. The man ducked to the side, and then again, and as his gun powered up to fire again, Steve shot a quick glance up at the ceiling. There was a hook on a rolling track, probably for moving heavy things up and down the train, and Steve leapt forward and grabbed the hook, hurtling through the air with his shield in front of him. Another blast of energy bounced off his shield, but he was going too fast for it to slow him down much. His feet plowed into the chest of the soldier who couldn't get out of the way in time, driving him to the ground. Steve dropped next to him and slammed his shield down into the man's helmet, making sure he wouldn't get up again.

He picked up the man's energy weapon and blasted open the door behind him, then threw it down and rushed forward. Through the window of the second door, he could see Bucky still fighting, two Hydra soldiers on the floor, but another one coming through the door at the back. Bucky wasn't using his wand—it must have gotten knocked out of his hand somewhere—and he was ducking behind a stack of boxes and darting up to fire at his oncoming opponent. Steve heard his gun click empty and saw him duck back behind the boxes again, breathing hard and making himself as small a target as possible.

Steve pulled out his own gun and hit the release mechanism on the door, keeping to the side to remain out of view of the other soldier behind the shelves. Bucky's head snapped over to look at him, his gaze fearful for a second until he registered that it was Steve and not another Hydra soldier coming up behind him. Steve held up the gun, then tossed it over to Bucky, who immediately dropped his old one and caught Steve's, nodding as he read the plan in Steve's eyes.

Bucky jumped up again, firing at the Hydra soldier and sending him diving for cover behind the shelf. Steve lunged into the room, slamming his shield into the long crate sitting on the shelf and sending it hurling toward the Hydra soldier's face. The soldier jumped out to the side to avoid getting his skull crushed, and Bucky fired again, a single shot catching him in the middle of the head and dropping him to the floor.

They both stood on guard for a second more, making sure no one else was coming. Steve let out a sigh of relief when it remained quiet, drawing in a deep breath. The tension dropped out of Bucky's shoulders and he lowered his gun. "I had him on the ropes," he said, brushing away how close that had been.

"I know you did," Steve replied, clapping his shoulder just like it had been any other fight. A familiar mechanical whine sang through the air behind them above the roar of the train, and he spun around to see another soldier with an energy weapon approaching, blue light glowing from the muzzle of the gun.

"Get down!" he yelled, shoving Bucky behind him as he raised his wand and yanked his shield back up into position. The blast of energy was closer to him than most of the ones Steve had blocked before, and the force of it connecting with his shield was enough to send him flying backwards into the wall. The angle the blast caught his shield was enough to send it hurling off his arm while he flew in the opposite direction, and Steve yelled as it felt like it was ripping his arm off as it flew away.

It took Steve a second to figure out which way was up after his head made contact with the wall, but even from the ground, he saw Bucky's legs move into view, blocking some of the glaring white glinting off the snow outside that he could see through the new hole in the wall, Bucky's hand darting down to scoop up Steve's shield.

Bullets cracked through the air as Bucky fired at the oncoming soldier, and Steve shoved himself to his knees, eyes searching the floor, trying to find where his wand had fallen. The whine of the gun powering up brought his eyes up again, and Steve looked up in time to see another burst of blue light blast through the compartment, knocking the shield out of Bucky's hand and flinging him back.

"BUCKY!" Steve yelled as his friend flew out the hole in the side of the train. He was on his feet and grabbing the shield before he could think about it, flinging it at the Hydra soldier and knocking him out with barely a conscious thought as he rushed to the side of the train, throwing off the helmet that had come loose and was slipping down into his face and obscuring his vision.

The wall of the train hadn't detached entirely when the energy hit it, and it had folded back on itself in the force of the wind. Bucky had managed to grab on to one of the rails on the side and was hanging on for dear life, dangling precariously out into empty space. "Bucky!" Steve yelled again, grabbing on to a section of railing and looking for somewhere to put his feet so he could slide over to him. He swallowed hard as he looked down—the gorge below had gotten a _lot_ deeper since they'd landed on top of the train. He could barely see the bottom.

"Hang on!" Steve told him, moving out onto the side of the train as fast as he could. Bucky started inching along the bar he was holding on to, eyes locked on Steve's. He looked terrified. Steve moved faster, then came to a tear in the metal too wide for him to step across. He leaned forward, stretching one hand as far as it would go. "Grab my hand!"

Bucky reached out, then the metal he was holding onto moved, tearing slowly away from the train, and he latched back onto it with both hands, catching himself as he shifted downward. Steve stretched even farther and Bucky reached out again, straining to close the gap between them. The wind was whipping his hair back from his face, allowing Steve to see clearly the fear in his eyes.

"No!" Steve yelled as the rail in Bucky's hand shifted and lurched down another couple of inches. Steve lunged forward, barely maintaining his grip, and his hand brushed Bucky's. For a moment, hope surged in his chest as his fingers and Bucky's scrabbled to lock together, then a wrenching sound of metal sheared the rest of the railing away from the train and ripped a hole in Steve's soul as Bucky plummeted out into space, a terrified scream escaping his lips, his hands still reaching out for Steve's.

The metal groaned and lurched in Steve's hand and he started to fall too, and he was never sure how he maintained his grip, never sure how he got back inside the train. He was just there, huddled in a ball on the floor, the wind whipping the tears from his face. A wave of pain ripped through his body, sorrow and fear and anguish tearing out of his throat in a tormented howl. Magic roared through his body with the pain and he didn't try to stop it, barely even noticed it as it exploded out of him, shredding through the walls of the train compartment, and those of the next one, and the next, reducing them to smoldering ash.

Bucky was gone. It was the end of the line.

* * *

.


	82. The Empty Canyon

_Adding one more chapter today because this is a little one and it ties right in to the last one. I don't know if it makes anything better, though. Sorry.  
_

* * *

They'd been lucky, Jim supposed, though he'd never really stopped to appreciate it. Two years the Howling Commandos had been together. Two years of staring death and Hydra in the face, and two years of coming out of it in mostly one piece, never damaged beyond repair. They were the only team that had never lost anyone. For two years, they'd been lucky.

And now, they weren't. Now they'd lost someone. Now Jim was standing in the bottom of an icy, frozen ravine, trying to find the body of one of his best friends. If there was anything to find. Jim swallowed hard and looked up, the side of the mountain where the train tracks ran lost in the distant haze. Bucky Barnes had survived so many things that he never should have, but that fall… Even Steve wasn't pretending they were going to find him alive.

Dugan and Monty had taken Zola back to Hogsmeade. S.S.R. people were climbing all over the train that was now stopped on the tracks, poring through the contents that, no matter how much they were worth, would never be worth this. And Jim was down in the bottom of the ravine with Gabe, Jacques, and Steve, looking for Bucky's body.

Jim had lost all feeling in his hands and feet hours ago, but neither he nor any of the others had suggested giving up. Bucky deserved to be brought home. His parents and his sister deserved the chance to put him to rest. His sister. God help him. Jim swallowed down the bile rising in his throat at the thought of Becky Barnes waiting back at Hogwarts. She was probably sitting on the steps of the main entrance, holding hands with Esther as they both watched the front gates, getting more nervous with each passing hour. The team should have been home hours ago, but they would be there, waiting for their brothers. And Becky's big brother was never coming home.

He dashed away the tears prickling in his eyes before they could freeze to his face. They'd been down here for hours, searching and finding nothing. They'd started by apparating down to the spot below where Bucky had fallen, then started looking up and down the ravine, going out farther and farther when their search turned up nothing. Though it was a long shot, Jim had been casting Revealing spells every few minutes as they searched. They never turned up anything but the four of them. It had started snowing, and they all realized that at the rate the snow was falling, wherever Bucky's body had fallen, it would quickly be buried. No one acknowledged that out loud, but they all started using their wands to melt any pile of snow they came across that looked deep enough for a body to be underneath.

It was starting to get dark now, the snow falling faster. Though there were any number of factors that would have kept Bucky from falling exactly straight down, they'd now been two miles out in either direction, up one side of the river and down the other. The brown, rocky earth below them, damp with melted snow, was a testament to how thoroughly they'd been searching. But there was nothing here.

Grief welled up in Jim's chest and he shoved it back down. This wasn't the time. As much as Bucky deserved a proper burial, they weren't going to find him. Not now. There was nothing more Jim could do for his friend. But there was still something he could do for Steve.

He caught up with his Captain, laying a gentle hand on his arm. Steve's face was red, both from crying and from the cold, and Jim's heart broke even more than it already was at the pain in his eyes. Becky wasn't the only one who'd lost a brother today.

"Steve," he said gently. "We need to go."

Steve shook his head. "No. Not until we find him."

Jim looked back to Gabe and Jacques for help. "Steve," Gabe said sadly. "He's not…" He swallowed hard. "I don't think we're going to."

"We have to," Steve insisted. "He has to be here somewhere. There—there's nowhere else for him to have gone, I—"

"Steve, we've been farther in either direction than he could have fallen," Jim said, as gently as he could. He swallowed down the nausea in his throat at the thought that had gotten harder and harder to push down the more ground they'd covered. "I think…" He swallowed again. "I think he hit the river."

All of their eyes darted to the Rhine, flowing swiftly down the middle of the gorge. It was easy enough to hop across with magic, but it was wide and deep and flowing fast, roaring with the snow that was melting somewhere upstream. They hadn't found any blood, any tracks, any…pieces…of anything. Not a shoe, not a scrap of fabric, not a watch or a button. If he'd hit the ground, they would have found _something_. But if he'd hit the water, everything would be gone.

"No," Steve said again. "It's too far out, it—"

"It isn't," Gabe said softly. The ravine was narrow and the river was wide. It would have been far too easy for him to have hit the water.

"Then we have to go in there," Steve said.

"If you go in there, you'll drown," Jim said. Not even super-soldier strength could hold up to the force of the current. "He's not going to be there anyway," he added quietly, nodding at the stretch of river in front of them. It had been hours, and with as fast as the water was moving, he could be as far away as Germany.

"I have to find him," Steve said. "I have to try."

"You have tried," Jim said gently. "I'm sorry, Steve, I really am," he said, his voice cracking. "He's not here."

Steve's face twisted up, his eyes staring desolately at the water, and Jim knew he was imagining Bucky's body floating downstream, tossed by the waves and battered by the rocks. "I can't leave him," he whispered.

"I'm sorry," Jim said again, wishing there was something else he could say. Steve's knees started to give out, and Jim slid an arm over his shoulders as he dropped to the ground.

"I tried, Jim," Steve whispered, sinking down to sit in the freezing mud. "I couldn't reach him, I—" He swallowed down a sob and his shoulders heaved under Jim's arm. "I couldn't reach him and I watched him fall. He was so scared. His arms were still reaching up, like I could still save him, but I couldn't—" He choked down another sob and drew his knees up, hiding his face. "He was always there for me," he whispered. "He always saved me. And I couldn't save him."

Jim couldn't stop himself from crying now either. Bucky had always been there for all of them. He sat down beside Steve, his arm still over his shoulder. Gabe sat down on Steve's other side, wrapping an arm across his back as well, and Jacques sat down in front of him. The four of them huddled together in the mud, crying for their teammate, for their friend that they'd lost, even as the river roared in front of them, the rushing of its waves mocking their grief.

They sat there until it was completely dark, the snow still falling, and Jim reined in his tears and sat up. He was still the team medic, and his team needed taking care of. He'd already lost one friend today, and maybe the last thing he could do for Bucky was to make sure Steve didn't sit out here until he froze to death.

"Come on, Steve," he said gently. "It's time to go home."

* * *

_There's no way to sugarcoat these last two chapters, but I'm still sorry. _

_I'll see you Friday._


	83. All The Pieces Of My Broken Heart

_What's left of the Howling Commandos are back, but it's not a happy homecoming. Steve and Peggy still have each other to try to help one another through this, but first Steve is going to have to step up and fill in some big brother shoes in a way he's never done before.  
_

* * *

Steve was sitting up in the infirmary, the shoulder he'd dislocated when his shield had been knocked away back in place, and he was clean and warm and exhausted and a million miles away from sleep. A cup of sleeping potion sat untouched on the table beside him. All he saw when he closed his eyes was Bucky falling. All he heard was his scream fading away as he dropped out of sight. He couldn't sleep. Not now. Maybe not ever.

He shoved himself to his feet and left, and he knew Nurse Rains saw him, but she didn't try to stop him. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he found himself drifting toward Ravenclaw Tower. Becky should know. Steve had to tell her. He didn't think he _could_ tell her. But she should know.

Before he got to the Tower, he rounded a corner and came across her coming down. "Steve!" she said happily, relief flooding her face when she saw him. "You're alright! You were so late getting back, I was getting worried." Nausea rose in Steve's throat, and he just barely managed to swallow it down. She was so happy. She was so happy, and he was about to rip her reality apart. "Steve?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

He opened his mouth, couldn't find any words, closed it.

"What's wrong?" she asked again, stepping closer. She looked around the corridor. "Where's Jay?"

Still no words.

"Steve?" she asked a little more sharply. "Where's Jay?"

Steve swallowed hard and still couldn't find anything to say, so he shook his head.

Horror flooded Becky's face. "No," she said, shaking her head.

"I'm so sorry," Steve said.

"No," she said again. "Where is he?"

"He…he fell," Steve said quietly. The tears pooling in his eyes started dripping from their corners. "Becky, he's not coming back."

"No," she said again, barely a whisper.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"You're _sorry_?" she repeated angrily. "My brother's dead, and you're _sorry_?! No!" she said, stepping closer to him and shoving at his chest. "You were supposed to protect him! That's your job! You two always look out for each other, and you were supposed to make sure he was safe!"

Steve felt his heart shatter into even smaller pieces, but he had nothing to say to that, because she was right. They were supposed to have each other's backs, and when it really mattered, Steve had failed. He hadn't protected Bucky, and Bucky was dead now and it was Steve's fault. Everyone knew it, and Becky was the only one honest enough to say it.

She shoved him again and whirled away, steel blue eyes blazing with fury, then almost immediately spun back around and threw herself into his arms with a force that surprised him enough to send him stumbling back a few steps. "I'm sorry, Steve!" she cried. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I didn't!" She looked up at him, every little bit of fire gone from her face and nothing but complete and utter misery in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that, I really didn't! I'm sorry, Steve, I'm sorry!"

"Sshh," Steve soothed, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in against his chest. "I know. It's okay."

"No," she said, shaking her head against his chest. She turned watery eyes up to him again. "I don't know why I said that. I know you would have tried so hard to save him."

"I did," Steve said quietly. It hadn't been enough, but he'd tried.

"You would have done all you could," she said. She sniffed loudly and started crying again. "Jay would say that's all anyone could do. He wouldn't be mad at you," she whispered. "Can you forgive me for saying that?"

"Becky, I—" Steve started. She'd been angry, and why not? There was nothing to forgive.

"Please?" she begged. She buried her face in his chest, and Steve could feel her tears soaking through his shirt. "You and me, we're all we've got left, and I don't want you to think I hate you, Steve, I don't! I'm so sorry, Steve, I'm really, really sorry!" she sobbed desperately.

"It's okay," Steve said again, leaning down and kissing the top of her head. "I know you are. It's okay." He stroked his fingers through her hair. Grief was still raging in his chest so fiercely he thought his ribs would crack, but her tearful insistence that she didn't blame him, that she needed him and that they were in this together, it settled something tiny and peaceful inside his soul. "I forgive you," he whispered, not because he needed to, but because she needed to hear it.

She looked up long enough to give him a grateful, watery smile, then she began crying in earnest, sobbing into his shirt. Steve just held on to her and didn't try to stop himself from crying too. Eventually, he sank down onto the floor against the wall, no longer having the strength to keep holding her and stand up at the same time. He sat down and pulled her into his lap, rocking her back and forth as they cried together.

Eventually, both of their tears ran out. They sat in silence for several minutes, then Becky shifted on his lap and lifted her head. Her eyes were red and puffy and miserable. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked softly.

As best as he could, stopping occasionally to steady his breathing, Steve relayed what had happened on the train. Becky listened quietly, not interrupting, sniffling periodically, but not crying anymore. "Did you get him?" she asked when he was finished. "Zola?"

Steve nodded.

"Good," she said. "Jay would be glad about that." Hard lines settled across her face. "I hope they hurt him," she said fiercely.

Steve didn't know if it was the healthy response or not, but he hoped so too.

A few minutes more of silence passed. "Here," Steve said, shifting a little bit as he remembered what he had in his pocket. He'd found Bucky's wand on the train, stuck underneath the broken side of one of the crates. He pulled it out and placed it in her hand.

"Jay's wand?" she breathed.

Steve nodded. Cherry and Phoenix feather. "I think you should have it."

She gave him a small smile and hugged the wand against her chest, starting to cry again. Steve pulled her back against his chest and just held on.

"He's really gone?" she whispered.

Steve had to swallow a couple of times before he could answer. "Yeah," he replied shakily.

She sniffed and nuzzled her head deeper into his chest. "Steve, what are we gonna do?"

Steve leaned his head back against the wall, tears pooling in his eyes again. He'd been asking himself that all day. "I don't know," he admitted. He leaned in, resting his head on top of hers and cradling her more closely. "But I've got you. Whatever else happens, I've got you."

They sat there and cried for a little while longer. Eventually, Becky's tears subsided into little sniffles and shakes, and Steve pushed himself to his feet with a groan, keeping her cradled against his chest. He carried her up to the infirmary and found the bed Nurse Rains had gotten ready for him, the cup of sleeping potion still sitting on the table. "Here," he said quietly, holding out the cup after he'd laid her down. "Drink this."

She shook her head, the gesture weary and automatic, with no fight in it.

"It'll help," Steve said, placing the cup in her hands. This way she could at least have several long, dreamless hours where she could forget for a little while that her brother was dead and how much it hurt. Her fingers wrapped around it automatically and she took a long drink.

Steve took the cup back and set it on the table, tugging the blanket up over her and resting one hand in her hair. "Get some sleep," he told her.

She blinked open eyelids that were already flagging, steel blue eyes staring up at him that were so like her brother's it took everything Steve had not to start crying again. "I love you, Steve," she whispered.

Steve leaned in and kissed her forehead. "I love you, too," he said.

He stayed there beside her, leaving his hand on her hair and humming the song his ma used to sing to him until he was sure she was asleep. "Is Professor Phillips still down at the Hog's Head?" Steve asked Nurse Rains as he stood back up. He knew they were holding Zola there for a little while under very heavy guard. No one had wanted to bring someone that dangerous up to Hogwarts, no matter how secure the dungeons were.

She nodded, looking lost for anything else to say, and Steve nodded and left. He made his way swiftly out the gates and down to the village, running into Phillips as he was stepping out of the Hog's Head. "Rogers," Phillips greeted, inclining his head. He so rarely showed emotion, but there was sorrow there behind his lined eyes now. Steve swallowed hard. That didn't help.

"We don't have to do your debrief tonight, son," Phillips said, and, oh, that hurt even more. He couldn't take gentle, compassionate Phillips on top of everything else.

"That's not why I'm here, Sir," Steve said. Phillips arched a questioning eyebrow, inviting him to go on. "It's my fault Bucky's dead, Sir," he said. He'd been thinking about it a lot—could hardly think about anything else—and Becky didn't blame him, and the guys on the team didn't either, but Steve should have saved him and he hadn't. Bucky's death fell squarely on Steve's shoulders. "I don't, I don't know if the S.S.R. does something like a court-martial, or if there's some other kind of disciplinary action—"

"Shut up," Phillips told him, and the terse, gruff words were at least a semblance of something normal. "It isn't your fault."

"He was covering me when I went down," Steve insisted. He should have clocked the guy coming behind them sooner, should have gotten out of the way of the blast, should have gotten up faster. Should have reached farther. "That's when he took the hit, and then I couldn't get to him in time to—"

"And you're the first person in the history of warfare to need someone to cover them?" Phillips asked, cutting him off again. "If we court-martialed someone every time they had bad luck, there would be three people left in this army," he continued. "There are things nobody can control, and I'm sorry for this, Rogers, I truly am," he said, and his hand twitched like he was thinking about putting it up on Steve's shoulder. "Barnes was a good man. But his death is on Hydra, and nobody else." He stood up a little straighter. "Request for disciplinary action denied, Captain."

"Yes, Sir," Steve said quietly.

"You said he was covering you when he went down?" Phillips asked after several seconds.

"Yes, Sir," Steve said again.

Phillips nodded. "Knowing Barnes, if he had to go, that's what he would have wanted to be doing."

Steve swallowed down a painful lump in his throat. "Is that supposed to make me feel better, Sir?" he asked sharply. Because it sure as hell didn't.

"No," Phillips said, shaking his head sadly, and this time he did put a hand on Steve's shoulder. "No, it's not. Right now, I don't imagine anything will." He patted his shoulder and then lowered his hand. "But one day, it might."

Tears prickled in Steve's eyes again, and Phillips tactfully turned to study his reflection in the window to give him time to wipe them away.

"We have Zola secured down at the police station," Phillips said after minute, nodding his head down the road. "It was a better place to hold him than anywhere in the bar. That's where I was headed. You want to sit in on the interrogation?"

Steve stared down at his feet and swallowed down a knot in his throat. "No," he said quietly, and his voice was shaking a little bit, but it wasn't with sadness this time. "No," he said again. "He knows things that will help us find Schmidt and end the war. I know how much we need that." Zola had tortured and nearly broken Bucky once, and now, because of him, Bucky was gone. Steve wanted nothing more than to take the little scientist and make him suffer in every way that he'd made Bucky suffer before tearing him in half. His eyes snapped back up to meet Phillips', the fury burning in them matching the anger in his voice. "So I'm not coming. Because if I'm in the same room as him, I'm gonna kill him."

Phillips nodded in understanding. "You'll get a chance for that yet."

He left, leaving Steve standing there in the door of the bar. A tremor ran through Steve's body as he looked up the road toward Hogwarts. He couldn't go back. Going back meant going to his dorm, going to his room, and there would be Bucky's bed and all his things, waiting like Bucky was going to come back to them, like everything was still okay. A sob rose up in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed it down. He couldn't do it. Not now. Not yet.

Voices sounded behind him, and he turned his head toward the warm light coming through the door of the bar. It hadn't helped Bucky two years ago. It probably wouldn't help Steve now. But it was cold out here and warm in there, and at least there would be noise and people and things to distract him for a little while, and he stepped inside.

* * *

Peggy hadn't gone in with Phillips to interrogate Zola—something like that was still beyond her pay grade—but she'd sat outside and listened and seethed and fumed and it was an excellent distraction from the chaos of emotions that had been swirling in her head since Dugan and Monty brought Zola back this afternoon and told them Bucky was dead.

She couldn't handle this right now. One of her best friends in the whole world had just fallen to a terrible death, and if she stopped and processed it all and mourned like she should have, she would have fallen apart. And there wasn't time for that now. Because the Valkyrie was ready to launch, and Johann Schmidt was going to bomb half the globe in two days. She had a job to do. She could hold on for two days. Then she would mourn and grieve and allow herself to feel all the pieces of her shattered heart.

At least, that's what she kept telling herself, but her resolve was waning as the evening drew on. Then the interrogation was over and there was nothing more to distract her. Phillips was going to run down some intel to confirm Zola's confession, and Peggy all but begged him to let her help, but he turned her down. They had two days before the Valkyrie launched. He would gather his intel tonight, and then he would meet with the Howling Commandos to hash out a plan of attack. Schmidt's timetable didn't allow them the time they would need to recover from the loss of one of their own, but Phillips would give them—including her—what he could.

"I've been in intelligence long enough to be able to handle this part on my own," he told her. "As soon as I've got the confirmation I need, we'll meet and move out. But until then, stand down. That's an order," he added, when she opened her mouth to protest.

"Yes, Sir," she said.

As she started the walk back up to school, doubting she'd be able to go to her dorm and get the sleep she'd need, the worry for Steve that had been churning in the back of her head along with her grief started pushing its way back to the front. She knew he'd stayed behind to look for Bucky's body. (Ugh, just thinking those words made her want to throw up!) She'd heard they'd come back, but she hadn't seen him. She'd expected him to come to the interrogation, and if she hadn't been so focused on keeping her own grief in check, she'd have started worrying sooner.

Raucous laughter sounded from inside the Hog's Head as she walked by, and her head snapped up to look inside, fury building in her chest. How dare people be laughing, singing and joking as if nothing was wrong? Didn't they know that Bucky Barnes was dead?

She did a double-take and looked up through the window again—there was Steve, sitting in the back corner alone at a table. She wondered what had brought him here, while at the same time feeling glad that she'd found him without having to go up and search all over the school grounds. Skirting around the crowded tables near the fire, she made her way to the back corner where he sat, half in the shadows. Somewhat to her surprise, there was a glass and a dark bottle, nearly empty, sitting on the table in front of him. She hadn't thought Steve was much of a drinker, though now would certainly be the time for it.

He looked up as she approached, and, oh, that broken look on his face…She didn't think she had the strength for this. Not now. But he needed her now, and she needed him too, more than she ever had, and maybe between them, they could muster up the strength to keep going.

Steve sat up a little straighter and wiped a hand across his nose. He'd caught her glance at the bottle, and he nodded at it. "Professor Erskine said the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells," he said in a thick voice. "Create a protective system of regeneration, which means, um…" He huffed a bitter, humorless laugh. "I can't get drunk."

Peggy sat down in the chair next to him. "Did you want to?" she asked gently.

Steve shook his head and sniffed again. "Two years ago," he began softly. "After I brought Bucky home from Azzano…" Another sniff. "He was pretty messed up for a while."

Peggy nodded. She'd heard a little bit about what that time had been like, though she could only imagine how hard it was.

"There was a while he wasn't sleeping," Steve told her. "Couldn't, 'cause of what he kept seeing. And one day, he snuck out and went to a bar and got drunk." He shook his head. "I was so mad at him," he said softly. "And then when he told me why…how desperate he was to forget all of that awful stuff, just for a little bit, I—" His breath hitched in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed it down. "I thought I understood." He let out a long, stuttering breath. "I really understand now."

There was silence for a minute, then Steve went on. "It didn't work for him back then." He shoved the bottle away, unconcerned as it wobbled dangerously on the edge of the table. "It's not going to work for me now, either." He leaned his elbows down onto the table and dropped his head, threading his hands into his hair. "I don't know why I thought it would," he whispered. "I just…" He looked up again, pain swimming in his eyes. "Peggy, I don't know what to do," he breathed, and the desperation in his words broke her heart even more than it already was.

"I don't either," she admitted, her own voice dangerously shaky. She did know one thing, though: the common room of the Hog's Head was not where either of them needed to be right now. "Wait here a moment," she told him, resting a hand briefly on his arm. She drew in a steadying breath and walked over to the barkeeper. A brief exchange and a few coins, and he pointed her to the stairs and gave directions to one of the available rooms. It was hardly the sort of thing a good girl did, renting a room in a bar with a soldier for one night, but Peggy couldn't have cared less about what she _should_ do—they were both on the verge of breaking to bits, and if they were going to have any hope of getting each other through this, they would need some space. The kind of peace you could never find in a crowd. She took Steve's arm and pulled him gently to his feet, grabbed his coat from off the back of the chair, and led him up the stairs. He followed her compliantly, seemingly unconcerned with where they were going or the fact that they were moving at all.

"Alright," she told him, closing the door to the room behind them and sitting him down on the bed. A flick of her wand got a fire going in the grate, then she sat beside him and looped an arm around his back. His arm moved up reflexively to wrap around her shoulders and she leaned into the warmth he was offering, closing her eyes with a brief sigh.

"I don't know what to do, Steve," she told him, picking up their conversation from downstairs. "I don't know what to say." She looked up at him. "But I do know that it wasn't your fault."

Steve looked down at her skeptically. "Did the other guys tell you what happened?"

She nodded.

"Then you know that's not true," he said bitterly.

"You did everything you could," she told him, and even though she had yet to hear any details about what happened on the train, she knew down to the depths of her soul that was true.

"You don't know that," he said. "You weren't there."

"I do know that," she said. "Because I know you, and I know how much Bucky meant to you. But you're right, I wasn't there. And if you think you can, you can tell me what happened." She was trying to sound warm and inviting, as much as she could, anyway, given the circumstances. She didn't want him to think she was demanding an official report or anything. Just letting him know that she was willing to share this burden with him.

As if reciting it somewhat by rote, Steve started to tell her what happened from the moment they landed on the train. His mechanical recitation broke down, however, as he got to the bit about Bucky picking up the shield to cover him before flying out the hole in the side of the train.

"I couldn't reach him," he said brokenly. "He was there, hanging on, and I…He was so scared, Peggy," he whispered. "But he…" He sniffed and dashed his sleeve across his face. "He trusted me. I could see it in his eyes, even though he was scared—he trusted me. He knew I was gonna save him, because that's what we did, me and him, that's what we always did. He was trusting me to save him right up to the moment he fell." He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. "But I didn't," he added in a barely audible whisper.

Peggy was crying now, her own pain and Steve's mingling in the tears trickling from her eyes. "It's not your fault," she said again.

"Weren't you listening?" he snapped, glaring down at her through the tears pooling in his own eyes. "Yes, it is! I could have saved him, but I didn't. I didn't!"

"Steve, you tried," she said sadly. "You tried as hard as you could."

Steve snorted. "What good is it, this serum, this strength, all these abilities, if the one time I need it, the one time it really matters, I can't do anything with it?! Four inches! He was so close! Four inches was all I needed, and I could have grabbed his hand and pulled him back and my best friend would be alive right now instead of…" His shoulders heaved as his breath caught in his throat and his face twisted up in a miserable grimace. "Instead of…" Another barely contained sob. "I lost him, Peggy," and his voice was a broken little whisper now. "I tried so hard, and I…" There was no holding back the wave of misery now. "I lost him."

"I'm sorry," she said, all she could say. "I'm so sorry." Her chest constricted as if an iron band were wrapped around it, slowly growing tighter, and her shoulders heaved as she tried to swallow down a sob. She wished she hadn't asked. Steve had needed to talk about how it happened, and she had needed to know, she really did, but, dear Lord, she wished she hadn't asked. Because she could see it now. It was one thing to know that Bucky had fallen, but she could see it now, see him hanging on to the outside of the train, fumbling to reach Steve's hand. She could see exactly what his face would have looked like, imagine how his scream would have carried over the wind as he fell. A desperate gasp of air managed to escape the tightening in her chest, and her face twisted up as her tears began to flow in earnest.

She felt Steve's hand move on her back, and then he was leaning in, his breath warm against the side of her face as he pulled her closer to him. "Oh, Peggy, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, I didn't…" She felt him shake his head. "I'm, I'm being selfish," he said, letting out a long, stuttering breath. "Acting like I'm the only one who—"

"No, you're not," she managed, a tiny smile creeping onto her face even as she wept, because how very like Steve to try to set aside his own pain when someone else was hurting. "He was like your brother. It's not selfish."

Steve kissed her forehead gently, then rested his head against hers. "We both lost him," he said softly. "I'm falling apart here, but I should have realized you were too." He pulled her up so she was sitting on his lap and rested his head in her hair. "I'm not in any kind of shape to be much help right now, but I'm here."

Peggy hugged him tighter. "I'm the same," she said in a watery voice. She was surprised at how much lighter the pain suddenly seemed to bear. Yes, Bucky was one of her best friends, but he had meant so much more to Steve, it was as though allowing her own grief to show was some sort of intrusion. But Steve was letting her in, and though she was sharing his load now, he was sharing hers as well. The loss still cut her to the core, but she suddenly felt as though perhaps she could bear it after all.

She wasn't sure how long they sat there, holding on to one another as if they were the last two people in the world. There were no words—there was nothing that could be said. There were no painful, wracking sobs. There was just silent tears—Peggy's soaking into Steve's shirt, and Steve's dripping into Peggy's hair—and the knowledge that they weren't alone. Though neither of them had any strength for themselves, they found they had strength enough to lend, and they sat there for a long time, simply holding one another together.

As the tears ran dry, they continued to sit there, holding on, until finally, Steve spoke. "Peggy?" he asked, his voice creaking a little as if from disuse.

She looked up in answer, meeting his red, swollen, but—for the moment—dry eyes.

"I know it…" he started, then seemed to lose the words. He sighed, and his voice was not entirely steady when it returned. "When my ma died," he said softly. "I fell into this dark, dark hole. And I'm there again. Right on the edge. I don't know how to stop myself from falling in, and I don't know how to get out on my own. Bucky got me out. Back then, and every time something bad happened, he was always there to get me out. If I fall in again, I—" His voice caught in his throat, and he shook his head. "It's not fair of me to ask, because I know you're hurt too, and I'm sorry, but…" Tears were glistening in his eyes again. "Help me, Peggy. Please?"

Peggy raised a hand to cup his cheek, thumbing away the single tear that had escaped from his eye. "Of course, I will," she told him, and, oh, the way she could actually see a part of that weight rolling off his shoulders, it made her want to cry. "I may not always know how," she admitted. "But I will." She gave him a watery smile. "We can prop each other up until we can stand again."

Steve smiled at her and kissed her softly. "Thank you," he whispered. He slid one large hand around the back of her head and drew her forward to lean against his chest again. Peggy closed her eyes and nestled her head against him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest and listening to his heartbeat, and there was comfort in those small, steady rhythms.

She listened for a while to the thumping of Steve's heart and the crackling of the fire. "You know," she said eventually, when her voice felt as though it could speak without cracking. "I didn't think much of Bucky when I first met him." Steve leaned back and arched a puzzled eyebrow, and she smiled softly. "It took me a while to realize that Bucky always acted confident, even when he really wasn't, and eleven-year-old me just saw this cocky American with a swagger and was thoroughly unimpressed. Bit of a show-off on the Quidditch pitch, too." Her smile grew wider. "But then I noticed how nice he was to you, back when hardly anyone else was, and that he was like that all the time, even if it wasn't the 'cool' thing to do. And I saw that and I thought, well, perhaps he was alright after all."

Steve was smiling as she recounted her memory, and she snuggled back against his shoulder, but tilted her head up so she could keep looking at him. "And then there was that day all the boys were playing Quidditch, back before you helped me get on the House team, and you and I were going to play with them. Bucky didn't care that a girl wanted to play, or that I would rather Beat than Keep, and he said 'sure' and just acted as though I belonged there. He was the first person, besides you, who did that. And I thought to myself, if he was that much like you, then we could be good friends."

Steve chuckled softly.

"When did the two of you become friends?" Peggy asked. She'd never actually asked before. She just knew they'd always known each other, and she wondered how far back it went.

"We met when we were three," Steve told her. "That long ago, I'm kind of fuzzy on the details, but…" He trailed off thoughtfully, recalling. "I guess we'd been at the same church for a little while, but you know, when you're that little, you're not really aware of much. But I remember this one day, some bigger kids had knocked me over or something, and my nose was bleeding and I was sitting there on the grass trying not to cry. And then this kid came over and stood there and looked at me, and for a minute I was worried he was gonna pick on me too. But he kind of smiled and he sat down beside me and patted me on the back and said, 'I'm sorry those big kids hurt you. That wasn't very nice. Here.' And he reached over with his sleeve and wiped the blood off my nose. Then he got up and held out his hand and said he would help me find my ma. And he pulled me up on my feet and put his arm over my shoulder and asked me what my name was. And I told him, and then he said, 'Hi, Steve. I'm Bucky. And I'm…'" Steve stopped and sniffed, reaching up a hand to wipe his nose, and his eyes were shining, but he was smiling fondly. "'I'm gonna be your friend,'" he finished softly.

Peggy smiled, feeling her own eyes watering. That was rather lovely. "That was very like him, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "He just had this way with people…"

It was true. As Peggy herself had quickly learned, his charm was more than just a veneer. He really had been that kind, that thoughtful. He was easy to trust and always came through on his word, and never thought himself too good for anybody—the way he doted on Rebecca and made time for her and her friends, or the way he took the underclassmen soldiers, like little Alfie, under his wing.

"I remember this one time," Steve said, memory sparking in his eye. "After I'd come to live with the Barneses, and I'd gotten sick…" It was the first time he'd gotten sick in his new home, and Peggy found herself smiling as he recounted the lengths to which Bucky had gone to try to make him feel better, going beyond what he usually did to make sure Steve knew that, even though things were different now, everything was going to be okay.

They talked well into the night, sharing memories as they came to them, and though the loss of Bucky was still a gaping maw of sorrow in her chest, Peggy's soul felt uplifted at the happy stories, able to see beyond the pain and remember the bright spot he'd been in both their lives.

The fire was dying, the soft, tentative light of early dawn creeping into the window as a drowsy silence settled over them, and Peggy wouldn't call it quite peaceful after what they'd lost, but it was something close. She felt her eyes drifting shut, and she snuggled in closer to Steve with a sleepy sigh. She felt him moving, and she was just awake enough to realize that Steve was ever the gentleman and was probably going to leave her up on the bed and move down to the floor, but she was just tired enough to be unable to say the words, "Please, don't let me go yet." She thought the calm that had settled over her might shatter if he did.

But he didn't. She was lying down now, something soft pillowing her head, and Steve's arms were still around her, her hand still locked in his. His breathing was low and even in her ear, and he was warm against her side and close enough for her to hear his heartbeat if she turned her head, and Peggy couldn't recall a time she'd ever felt more safe.

And so, frightened and wounded but very much together, they slept.

* * *

Steve woke up slowly, his eyes fluttering open lazily, and it took him a minute to make sense of what he was seeing. Peggy was asleep beside him, her face nestled against his chest and her hand resting on one of his arms. She was breathing soft and slow, the pained lines that had been etched across her face last night smoothed out in sleep, her dark hair outlined in gold as it caught the rays of early afternoon sun coming through the window. Steve smiled, unable to stop himself from gently brushing his hand across the soft, warm skin of her cheek. She was so beautiful.

She sighed, rolling her face up toward his hand, and he slid it around to the back of her head and cradled her more closely against him, planting a soft kiss in her hair. His eyes roamed around the room, taking stock of where they were and remembering what had happened last night. He huffed a soft laugh. What Bucky would say if he knew Steve had spent the night with a girl—however innocently—in a rented room in a bar. He'd—

A cold weight dropped into Steve's stomach. Bucky wouldn't say anything about it. He was never going to say anything ever again. Steve drew in a long, slow breath and forced his mind back from that precipice. He couldn't fall in there again. Bucky wasn't here to get him out. And Bucky…Steve remembered how far he'd fallen after he lost his ma, how broken and self-destructive he'd become before he hit the bottom. He remembered how badly that had hurt Bucky. Bucky wouldn't want him to do that again. And maybe…Maybe that was one last thing he could do for Bucky. He could try to keep himself together enough so that wherever Bucky was, he wouldn't be worried that he was too far away to help.

He choked down a sob. Hold himself together. Right. The loss of Bucky was like an open wound, and Steve was bleeding out. Peggy shifted beside him, and he pulled her closer against him with a sudden desperation, the motion more rough than he'd intended it to be, but he needed her as close to him as he could get her. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply, focusing on the faint scent of lavender that lingered from the shampoo she used, not allowing himself to think of anything else until he was breathing steadily again. Maybe holding himself together was asking a little much right now, but he owed it to Bucky to try, and if it was more than he could do himself…If it was more than he could do himself, he just had to hold on to Peggy. Like she'd said last night, they could keep each other together until they could stand on their own again.

Once he felt like he could breathe again, Steve opened his eyes, then sat up carefully. He slipped gingerly off the bed so as not to wake Peggy, then grabbed his coat that she'd put on one of the chairs and draped it over her. He got the fire going again and set to making tea with the things set out on the little table by the door. As he finished with the tea, he noticed her watching him with a sleepy smile. "Morning," she said softly.

"Hey," Steve replied, picking up the tray and coming to sit down next to her. "Although it's more like afternoon, now." He held out a cup. "Lots of honey and a little bit of milk."

She sat up and accepted it with a smile. "Just the way I like it." She took a sip, then looked up at him. "How are you?"

Steve sighed, taking a drink of his own tea before answering her. "I don't know," he said at last. He didn't feel like he was about to break down crying, although that could easily come on again. "I'm not okay, but…I guess I'm a little more in one piece than I was last night. I mean, the patchwork's all duct tape and safety pins, so I don't know how well I'd trust it to hold, but…" He took one hand off his teacup and took one of hers, squeezing it tightly, looking down at her with a soft, grateful smile. "I'm not okay. But I'd be a whole hell of a lot less okay if you weren't here. Thank you." He squeezed her hand again. "How are you doing?"

"Functioning," she said, after thinking for a moment. "More than I would be if not for you." She stretched up and kissed him gently. "Thank you."

He smiled and leaned down and rested his forehead against hers, and they just sat there for a minute. Steve didn't know where it went from here, didn't know how he could ever be okay again after something like this, but he wasn't alone. If he had nothing else, he could cling to that.

"I love you, Peggy Carter," he whispered. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I love you too, Steve," she replied. "So very much."

They finished their tea in warm, companionable silence, leaning shoulder to shoulder, each drawing strength from the other's presence to fortify themselves against whatever came next.

Steve didn't think the grief he felt would ever go away, but the edges had dulled now into something less raw, allowing him to feel the other emotions underneath it—and one of them was anger, fury churning on a slow boil that was heating up now that he had space to feel it. When his ma had died, he hadn't really been sure where to direct his anger, and that had made a hell of a mess. But he sure as hell knew where to direct that anger now.

"What did Zola say?" he asked. Zola was still alive. Schmidt was still out there. Bucky was gone, but Hydra wasn't, not yet, and Steve wasn't going to stop until there was nothing left of them but ashes.

"The Valkyrie launches tomorrow," Peggy told him. "It's some sort of airship, with bombs and curses and all sorts of destructive weaponry on board. Enough to take out entire cities at the touch of a button. He told us where it was, and Phillips is getting confirmation right now. As soon as he has it, we're going in."

Steve nodded. "Schmidt's going to be on it?"

"That's what Zola said."

"Good," he said shortly. "He's going to burn, Peggy. For everything he's done, for everything he's taken…I'm not going to stop until all of Hydra's dead or captured."

Peggy reached over and took his hand. "And you won't be alone," she said fiercely. They were in this fight together, and Hydra was going to rue the day they ever dragged them into it.

They had some food sent up and Peggy went over every detail she remembered from Zola's interrogation while they ate—everything he'd said about the Valkyrie, as well as Schmidt's desire to 'harness the power of the gods' by using the Tesseract, and Zola's belief that he could do it. Time was short, and planning and setting this mission up, that was something Steve could focus on that didn't hurt, something productive he could do with the fire burning in his soul.

They walked back up to the castle and met Phillips coming up from the dungeon level as they came in the main entrance.

"Oh, good," he said. "I was just about to start looking for you. Round up your boys, Captain. We're going after Schmidt. My office. Ten minutes."

"Yes, Sir," Steve replied. He turned to Peggy as Phillips walked away. "Can you find the team? I know ten minutes isn't very long, but I need to check on Becky."

"Of course," Peggy said. She kissed him on the cheek and hurried off to find the rest of the team while Steve made his way upstairs.

Becky was still in the infirmary, though she wasn't asleep anymore. She was still lying in bed, but Esther was sitting beside her, running her fingers through her hair and talking to her softly. She sat up enough to hug Steve, and she clung to him longer than she normally would have, but she didn't say anything, and she didn't really seem to hear anything he said. Steve felt awful about having to leave her there, but Esther promised she'd stay with her.

Steve made it into Phillips' office just as the rest of the team was gathering around the table. They were much quieter than usual, and Steve wondered if they were aware of the fact that they'd left a seat down at the end next to him—Bucky's usual spot. It was just habit, Steve knew, but it sent a sharp, stabbing pain through his heart as it reminded him that Bucky wasn't there to take the seat. He turned his attention instead to the briefing packet in front of him, ignoring the empty chair.

Phillips started going over the details of his conversation with Zola, but Steve was only half listening. He'd heard it all from Peggy already, but he kept one ear out for anything new, the rest of his attention focused on the papers in front of him as something like a plan started stirring in his brain.

"Johann Schmidt belongs in a bughouse," Phillips said, glancing back at the map on the wall and then back to them. "He thinks he's a god and he's willing to blow up half the world to prove it. Starting…" He pointed back to the map and the North American east coast. "With the USA."

"Schmidt's working with powers beyond our capabilities," Howard said, coming in from wherever he'd been and sliding into the empty chair next to Steve. "Wizards and military back home aren't prepared for this kind of attack. If he gets across the Atlantic, he will wipe out the entire Eastern Seaboard in an hour."

Silence hung over the table as everyone took that in. Schmidt had proved to them before just how far beyond the reaches of ordinary magic he could go. Power like that should have been just the stuff of science fiction radio dramas, but not one of them doubted he could do it.

"How much time have we got?" Gabe asked.

"According to our guest, under twenty-four hours," Phillips said.

"Où est il maintenant?" Jacques asked.

"Hydra's last base is here," Phillips said, holding up a photograph of a massive opening carved out of the side of a snowy mountain. Steve looked up quickly, and could see the time stamp on the bottom showing that it had been taken earlier today—part of Phillips' confirmation of Zola's intel. "In the Alps. Five hundred feet below the surface."

Steve snorted softly to himself. Peggy had been right. Underground in the Alps. Perfect place to hide a giant death machine. He wondered if that was where Zola's train had been going when they stopped it and Bucky…

"So, what are we supposed to do?" Jim asked. The place was isolated, guarded, with wards on top of wards. Impossible to sneak into. "It's not like we can just knock on the front door."

"Why not?" Steve said. It was the first time he'd spoken during the entire briefing, and all eyes swung down to his end of the table. He set down the papers he'd been looking at. There was no sneaking into Schmidt's base. Even if it wasn't impossible in the first place, they'd taken Zola. Schmidt had to know they were coming. So why not let him think he was right? They would come, in exactly the way he thought they would, and then once he thought his trap was sprung, they could spring one of their own. "That's exactly what we're gonna do," Steve declared.

As far as Steve could tell, the only flaw in his plan was that it was going to take a hell of a lot more people than just the Howlies and there wasn't a lot of time left to get everyone together, but as he laid the plan out, Phillips assured him numbers wouldn't be a problem. They hammered out the details of the plan into the night, and then Phillips sent them all off to get what sleep they could before taking off first thing in the morning.

Becky was asleep again when Steve went up to the infirmary, and he contemplated staying there for the night, but he couldn't avoid his dorm forever. With a deep sigh, he turned and trudged back down the stairs. The common room was quiet, everyone having gone to bed already. The dark of their room helped him avoid looking over at Bucky's side of it as he grabbed his things and showered quickly, but once he had laid down in bed, he couldn't keep from rolling over on his side and staring through the dark at Bucky's unoccupied bed. The moon was bright tonight, bright enough to illuminate the folds of the blanket Bucky had hastily tossed into place in lieu of making the bed yesterday. His pajamas were still in a wrinkled pile down at the foot of the mattress, and there was a half-empty glass of water on top of the library book on his nightstand. It all looked so…normal. Like Bucky should be tiptoeing in from the bathroom at any minute, hair in a wet tangle. He would change into his pajamas and toss his towel over the door of his closet with a wet slap, then slide into his bed and pull the blanket up to his chin with that little exhale he always made when he dropped into bed. Then he would tell Steve to quit thinking so hard and to go to sleep because they had a lot to do in the morning. Depending on how snarky Steve's response was, Bucky might toss a balled-up sock at him.

Steve sniffed and closed his eyes against the moisture building in them, rolling his face into his pillow so he didn't have to look at Bucky's side of the room anymore. "I'm sorry, Bucky," he whispered. Everyone kept saying it wasn't Steve's fault, what happened, and Steve knew that if Bucky was here, he would say the same thing. The fact of the matter remained, though, that Bucky was dead and, physically possible or not, Steve hadn't saved him. "I'm so sorry."

Steve lay awake for a long time, not aware that he'd fallen asleep until his alarm clock started jangling. The room seemed softer in the light of day, though he still couldn't make himself look over at where Bucky should have been complaining about how early it was. He pulled on his uniform, noting Jacques doing the same and, somewhat to his surprise, Dave and Morris as well.

"Our units are coming too," Dave told him, catching Steve's curious eyebrow. "Phillips wants all hands on deck."

"And Bucky doesn't deserve any less," Morris added, pulling on his boots. His parents had never given him permission to join one of the student teams, but he'd signed up of his own accord after he turned seventeen. He sounded a little nervous—this was the biggest mission _any_ of the teams had been on, and he'd been at it for less than a year—but determined as well, and Steve gave him a nod.

He ate breakfast quickly and rushed up to the infirmary again while everyone else was still finishing. He couldn't leave Becky without telling her where he was going, and he hated to think how worried she would be. She was eating breakfast when he got there, and her face fell as her eyes landed on his uniform.

"You're going somewhere," she said softly, setting down her tray.

"Yeah," Steve sighed, an apology in his voice as he sank down next to her on the mattress.

"Why?" she asked. "I mean, you just got back, why do you…"

"I'm sorry," he told her. "We have to. Zola told us where to find Schmidt, and we don't have a lot of time to stop him."

She looked down and nodded.

"Becky, I'm so sorry," he told her. "I really, I don't want to go and leave you here like this."

"It's okay," she told him, looking back up. "I know why you have to. And if you can stop Schmidt…" Her voice started to wobble and she sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "If you can stop him, then the war'll be over and, and…and people can stop getting hurt," she finished in a sad whisper.

Steve wrapped his arms around her and hugged her, and she sniffled and hid her face in his chest. "You have to go," she said in a muffled voice.

"I know," he said, drawing in a deep breath. He kissed the top of her head. "I'm so sorry I have to leave you here all on your own."

"I'll be okay," Becky told him. She pulled her head back and looked up at him. "I will. You go and get Schmidt and you…you tear him apart for Jay and for everybody else he ever hurt."

Steve hugged her even tighter, squeezing his eyes shut and willing the tears in them not to fall. "I will," he said. "I promise."

"Good."

They sat there for several minutes, holding on to each other like they were afraid to let go. "Just…" Becky said in a small voice. Steve lifted his head to look at her. She was staring back up at him, the fear in her steel blue eyes threatening to spill over in a fresh wave of tears. "Just be careful, okay?" she pleaded.

Steve hugged her against his chest, resting his head on top of hers and kissing the top of her head again. "I will," he said again. "I promise."

She sniffed. "You'd better."

He managed a slight chuckle at that and kissed her head again. Someone clearing their throat softly behind him had him looking up to see Peggy standing behind them. "We have to go," she mouthed apologetically.

Steve nodded, then turned back to Becky, kissed her one more time and squeezed her tightly, then moved to pull away. She continued to cling to him, refusing to let go. "I'm so sorry, Becky," he breathed. "I have to go now."

"I know," she mumbled into his chest. "I'm trying to let go." She hugged him tightly, stretched up to kiss him on the cheek, then pulled away, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve.

Steve put a hand to her cheek and thumbed away the line of tears that had started to trickle from her eye. "I love you so much," he told her. "You know that, right?"

She reached up her hand to hold his against her cheek and managed a very watery smile. "I know. I love you too." She turned her head to kiss his hand, then let go.

Steve smiled, patted the back of her head, and stood up. "You be good 'til I get back," he said.

She smiled back, and it was a tiny smile, but a real one. "I'm always good," she replied.

Steve chuckled and moved away with Peggy. He hesitated in the doorway, turning back to wave goodbye and give Becky a final, parting smile.

"Are you alright?" Peggy asked as they headed for the stairs.

"As I can be," Steve said. He squared his shoulders back. "We're gonna get Schmidt. I've been waiting the whole war for this."

Peggy nodded and took his hand, squeezing it tightly. "Let's do it."

* * *

_Steve's about to come face to face with Schmidt for the first time. If Schmidt knew what was good for him, he'd be careful. See you on Monday for the Valkyrie!_


	84. The Eagle And The Snake

_Plans have been made. Armies have been gathered, and a few old friends have returned for the big fight. Johann Schmidt is about to rue the day he underestimated Steve Rogers.  
_

* * *

Steve didn't think he'd ever seen a larger army than the one gathered in the woods at the foot of the mountain that led to Schmidt's base. When Phillips told him numbers wouldn't be a problem, he hadn't been kidding around. Every single student team from Hogwarts was here, as well as several from other schools. Every fighting unit under the S.S.R.'s command was here, along with what had to be every Auror and magical soldier in Europe. Steve saw several familiar faces, including Alistair from Ethan's old unit, and Donovan, who was gearing up with the medical corps.

"Steve!" he said happily, making his way over. "It's good to see you!"

"You too," Steve said, patting him warmly on the back. "How have you been?"

Donovan nodded. "Not bad. I've put off Healer training to work with some medical units on the field until the war's over—looks like today might be the day, hey?"

"Sure hope so," Steve agreed.

"Listen," Donovan said, lowering his voice. "I heard about Bucky. I'm really sorry."

Steve nodded his thanks, not trusting his voice to say anything else.

"When we've finished with this," Donovan went on. "Let me know when the service is, yeah? I can take some time off, and I'd like to be able to talk to his parents and all."

"I will," Steve said. He hadn't had time to devote much thought to Bucky's memorial service, or even to what his parents would say, and he refused to do so now. A little voice that sounded remarkably like Bucky echoed in the back of his head and reminded him to keep his head in the game. But he would let Donovan know. It would be good to have as many people there as they could who'd fought alongside Bucky, and Steve thought the Barneses might like to meet him.

Colin came over then to greet his old unit leader, saving them from going down too emotional a road. He'd been cleared for active duty the week before, and this would be his first mission since losing his leg.

"Don't worry about me, Captain," Colin assured him. "I've been practicing, and I've got the feel now for running and moving with this thing. It won't slow me down, and I'll no' be in anyone's way. In fact, I've learnt a maneuver or two that might come in handy." To demonstrate, he walked over to a nearby tree and kicked at it, flexing the claws at the end of the limb as he did so and gouging a series of deep slashes in the wood.

Donovan let out an appreciative whistle. "I'd hate to be the Hydra soldier on the receiving end of that one."

Colin grinned. "Just let me at them."

Steve smiled and patted him on the back. "It's good to have you back."

"Captain!" Monty said, running over. "Listen, we're passing out charms from the magical creatures unit—has anyone given you one yet?"

"No," Steve said. "And the what, now?"

Monty grinned, handing him what looked like a little brass coin, then passing one to Colin and Donovan as well. "There's a unit of wyvern wranglers here. Came in on a special favor for Phillips. They're quite the fighters in tight spaces, but the wyverns get a bit frenzied once they get going. Just put this in your pocket or somewhere on you, and if you run into one once we're inside, they'll let you be."

"That's bloody fantastic!" Colin said, stuffing the coin into his pocket excitedly. "Where are they?"

"Over that way," Monty said, waving to the left. A distant reptilian screech accompanied the gesture. "And Dugan's looking for you," he added, turning back to Steve and pointing in the direction of the wyverns again.

Steve nodded. "Okay. Thanks." He patted Donovan on the shoulder. "I'll see you later. Good luck."

"You too," Donovan replied.

Steve headed off to find Dugan, who was, reluctantly, functioning as the Howlies' new second in command. He met up with him and they went over the Howlies' plan of entry and Steve's route for the initial assault, adjusting for the weather, which was cloudier than anticipated, and making suggestions for where the wyverns should go.

"Sounds good," Steve said when they were done. "I'm gonna check some last-minute stuff with Howard and the bike, but I think we're ready. Can you find Phillips and get the status from the rest of the unit leaders?" Steve had come up with most of the plan, and was more or less in charge of combat, but each fighting unit still had their own commander and objective, and Steve was glad he wasn't personally responsible for so many extra people.

"Aye, aye, Captain," Dugan said, shooting him a salute and walking away.

Steve walked over to where Howard was tinkering with his bike, which happened to be across from where the wyverns had landed and were being corralled. They were small for being related to dragons—only about the size of a horse—but Steve supposed you needed something small to fit through human-sized tunnels. He could definitely see why you'd want to keep out of the way of those claws and teeth, even if they didn't breathe fire like their larger cousins. Howard showed him the modifications he'd made to the motorcycle—adjustments for speed and steering sensitivity, as well as a couple of nasty surprises for anyone who might get too close chasing him.

"Now, the explosives are all in here, but they won't go off until you trigger them," he said, pointing at a button he'd added to the handlebars. "You sure about that part?" he asked. "I know you've put a lot of work into this bike."

Steve shrugged. He had put a lot of work into the bike. He loved this bike, but, well…he was having a hard time caring about that right now. They needed something big and explosive for the plan, and, who knew, maybe, maybe building a new one later would be good for him. "I'm sure."

"Alright," Howard said. He clapped Steve on the shoulder. "We're gonna get this, Steve."

"Steve?" came a vaguely familiar voice from the direction of the wyvern pen. Steve turned and saw a tall, red-headed woman climbing down from the back of one of the wyverns. She grinned. "I thought someone said you were here. But you're never the same wee thing that came flyin' out my cupboard five years ago! Bloody hell, but you've grown!"

Memory clicked into place and Steve's mouth dropped open. "Miss McCrimmon?"

She laughed. "Ach, call me Katie." She walked over and gave him a hug, pounding him on the back. "Well, look at you, then," she said, stepping back and looking him up and down. "Leading an army and everything. I never would have thought it." She smiled.

"Oh, well," Steve said, blushing a little and not really sure of what to say.

"I hear you've got your friends along as well. Is your mate, Bucky, here? I should like to meet him after all you had to say about him," Katie said.

"Oh." Steve's face fell. "No, he, uh…" He swallowed down a knot in his throat. "He's not…"

"Oh," Katie said, going nearly as red as her hair as she figured out what he was trying to say. "Oh, I'm sorry, lad. I didn't—"

"It's okay," Steve said quietly. "You didn't know." He swallowed the knot back down and squared his shoulders back. This wasn't the time. "So, uh, what are you doing here?"

"I've a knack for wyverns," she said, latching on to the change in topic. "My mates and I," she went on, waving at the group of people assembled around the animals. "We work with them a good bit, and yon Alec there," she said, pointing at a short man with a thatch of gray hair. "Is a friend of your Colonel Phillips. He thought we might be able to help raise a little hell for Hydra."

Steve did smile at that. "Good. The more the better."

"Aye," she said. She walked over to the pen and a bluish-green wyvern approached with a gait that could only be described as a ridiculously fast waddle. "This one's mine. Look at the teeth on her, eh?" she said, patting its snout. "And the claws, too," she added, pointing down at the reptile's two legs, each encircled with some sort of ankle bracelet connected by a series of little rings to vicious-looking metal extensions of the talons. She leaned forward and kissed its scaly nose. "She'll cause plenty of havoc, she will. My Pancake's a feisty wee thing."

Steve blinked. "Her name is Pancake?" That was an awfully cute name for a giant two-legged snake wearing brass knuckles.

"Aye," Katie said proudly.

"Okay."

"We're ready for you, Cap," crackled Dugan's voice in the radio in his ear.

"On my way," Steve said. He smiled over at Katie. "Good luck in there. And thanks for coming."

"Good luck to you too," Katie said. She shot him a salute. "Captain."

He took the bike and rode over to where Phillips and the rest of his team were waiting, startling the wyverns as he gunned the engine.

"See you inside, Cap," Dugan said. Steve was the one who was going to be knocking on the front door, drawing Schmidt's attention while the rest of his group snuck in the back.

"Be careful," Peggy said, kissing him quickly on the cheek.

"You too," Steve told her. "I'll see you in there."

He revved the engine and took off, breaking through the magical barrier they'd all been hiding behind and hitting the road that would take him straight to the front door of the base. He felt a tingle rush over his body as he broke through an alarm spell, then heard the far-off gunning of at least two motorcycles starting up somewhere behind him. He tightened his grip on the handlebars. It was time.

Steve dared a quick look behind him as the noise caught up with him. Okay, that was a lot more than two. He veered between a couple of trees, and it was hard to hear over the noise of so many engines, but he picked up the whine of a Tesseract weapon, and leaned a little to the left, letting the shield strapped to his back take the hit of blue energy. Another quick look back showed him that no one was holding a gun—they appeared to have had some modifications made to their bikes as well, with the barrels of the energy weapons mounted to the front of each one.

He checked his mirror as he approached a thick growth of trees on either side of the road, then flicked one of the switches Howard had installed by the handlebars. A thick cable flew out from the back of the bike, sharp spikes on either end impaling themselves in two of the trees and creating a neck-high line across the road. The first four soldiers chasing him ducked down underneath it, but the two in the back, unable to see around their comrades, drove directly into it, clotheslining themselves and flying from their bikes with undignified squawks of pain.

Two down.

Steve slowed down, letting the two bikes behind him get closer, then pushed another button and fire spurted out of the back of the machine, catching his pursuers in the blaze. One engine exploded, and then another one, and he zipped up ahead, extinguishing the inferno before it could catch his own engine.

Two more down.

The remaining two behind him zoomed off to the side, gunned the engines over a rise, and dropped back down into the road in front of him. Steve could see them moving to cut him off, so he put on a burst of speed, getting between them before they could close the gap. He leaned in and ripped the cap off the coolant tank on the nearest soldier's bike, then sped forward as the liquid gushed out onto the forest floor. At the speed they were going, it was less than fifteen seconds before the engine dried out, overheated and exploded, sending the Hydra bike careening out of control and into its companion. Steve looked back to make sure they were both down, and allowed himself a small smile of victory.

The last two were down, and just in time, as he rounded a bend and the trees cleared out to reveal a massive gate blocking the road, a snow-capped mountain rising up beyond it. The entrance to the gate was completely blocked by a large tank, and Steve smirked to himself—they definitely knew he was coming. Sending a tank out to meet one attacker seemed like overkill, but it was just one more obstacle he could clear that the team behind him wouldn't have to. He pulled his shield off his back and latched it onto the front of the bike, ducking down as he heard the turret powering up to fire.

Blue bolts of lightning shot out of the cannon, and he weaved back and forth, out-maneuvering the giant machine as it struggled to follow his path, though debris from the pieces of forest that it hit were raining down on him. He pushed another of the buttons Howard had installed, and two tiny, naquadah-powered missiles shot out of a barrel mounted around the front wheel. They'd thought he might have to blow the front gate open, but the missiles worked just as well for destroying a tank, and the giant machine went up in a blaze of fire. Steve ducked behind his shield as chunks of shrapnel flew his way, then he veered to the side, driving up the sloping wall to the side of the gate and shooting out to land beyond the blazing remains of the tank with a bone-jarring crash.

The Hydra soldiers in the yard, though momentarily stunned by the explosion, were quick on the uptake, rushing forward and firing more bolts of blue lightning at him. Steve ducked and dodged, weaving around soldiers, stationary tanks and trucks, until he had a clear view of the second gate, set into the base of the mountain. He lined the bike up, flicked a final switch, then stood up on the seat, grabbing the shield off the front and leaping into the air. He came down with his foot squarely on the head of one of the Hydra soldiers, whirling his shield around into the face of another. Glancing up in the direction of the bike, he was just in time to see it slam into the metal gate and go up in a ball of fire that took out not only the gate, but part of the wall too. He did feel something then, a sharp sting of emotion at the demise of his beloved motorcycle. But it had given its life for a good cause—there was no way the guards would have that hole fixed by the time the assault team arrived—and people were trying to kill him, and that was all the time he had to devote any thought to it.

He threw himself into the melee of guards rushing at him, and he lost himself for a little while in kicking and punching and flinging spells and hurling his shield. His anger and rage at Hydra fueled him, and he fought his way through the crowd with a ferocity he'd never felt before. Punching away the pain wasn't the healthiest way to deal with his grief, and he knew that, but right now, when it was Hydra on the receiving end of those punches, it felt pretty good.

He stopped short as a burst of orange flames shot by his face, so close he could feel the heat. In front of him was a Hydra soldier with some sort of shoulder-mounted fire-cannon, twin barrels shooting flames out on either side of Steve. The same flame and heat sounded behind him, and a second soldier with the same weapon appeared, the four jets of flame pinning Steve in the center of them. He looked around, gauging the approaching soldiers gathering beyond the flames. Alright. He lowered his shield and the flames died down, dozens of Tesseract guns training their barrels on him in their wake. Time to stop.

He set down his shield and his wand, slowly raising his hands. A guard darted forward to grab them, two more jumping forward to cuff Steve's hands behind his back. The rest of the soldiers stayed where they were, guns on Steve. He stood still, not making any moves that could be construed as fighting. Their message was pretty clear.

His captors walked him inside, another guard following behind keeping his gun trained on his back. Steve was pleased to see another guard trotting along beside that one, bringing Steve's wand and shield. Good. He didn't want to have to look for them later.

Steve and his guards walked down the long hallway. Steve noted turns and counted doors, and he allowed himself an internal smile of satisfaction when they led him into a large, domed room with a window overlooking the rest of the mountains. So far, everything was where Zola had promised it would be. And while Steve still didn't trust the little scientist, it did make the next part of the plan easier.

"Arrogance may not be a uniquely American trait, but I must say, you do it better than anyone," came a familiar voice from the shadows on the side of the room. Steve's eyes snapped around, and there he was. Schmidt. The lines of his blood-red face were sharp, a cavern of darkness where his nose should have been, and his teeth, though partially obscured by a frown, gleamed stark white and predatory. Steve swallowed down the rage boiling in his stomach, along with the desire to lunge forward and punch the head of Hydra until every one of the bones in that skinless face shattered into dust. Not yet. He made sure his face was schooled into something stoic. Not yet. Let him think he'd won.

Schmidt came to a stop in front of him, a glare reminiscent of a disappointed teacher on his face, and Steve fought down the absurd urge to laugh.

"I know you have ignored my warnings in the past, but there are limits to what even you can do, Captain." Schmidt said clicking his tongue in disapproval. "Or did Erskine tell you otherwise?"

"He told me you were insane," Steve replied, pleased to see the smug look disappear from Schmidt's face.

"Ah," Schmidt said, recovering quickly and lifting one shoulder in a shrug, as if he'd been expecting a reply like that. "He resented my genius and tried to deny me what was rightfully mine, but he gave you everything," he said, a tiny note of puzzlement creeping into his voice. His head was tilted to one side, studying Steve as if he were some sort of lab experiment. "So, what made you so special?" he asked, a mocking smile on his face.

"Nothing," Steve said, enjoying the perplexed line that appeared between Schmidt's eyebrows. (Eyebrows? Were they technically eyebrows if there wasn't any hair on them?) He smiled, knowing refusing to answer was pissing Schmidt off. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

Schmidt snarled and swung out first one fist and then another, knocking Steve's head to one side and then back again before plowing a fist into Steve's gut and making him double over and drop to his knees. Steve coughed and drew in an inhale that sounded suspiciously like a wheeze, trying to catch his breath. Schmidt's super-juice was flawed, but he still packed a hell of a punch. Ow.

Schmidt stood over him now, glaring down at him, and Steve raised his head, his breath back under control. "I could do this all day," Steve said.

"Oh, of course you can, of course," Schmidt agreed, condescension dripping from every word. "And while it would be fun, unfortunately, I am on a tight schedule." He pulled a pistol from his belt, the familiar whine of Tesseract energy humming inside it, and pointed it at Steve's face.

Steve's ears caught the quiet sounds of hooks chipping into rocks outside, and Schmidt must have picked it up too, the way his head snapped around to the window. Steve saw the silhouettes of his teammates approaching through the window, then turned back to Schmidt. "So am I," he growled.

Steve spun his body, yanking the Hydra guard at his right elbow around in front of him in time to take the shot from Schmidt's pistol. Glass shattered as bodies came flying through the windows, then the air was alive with the snap of bullets and spells as Gabe, Monty and Dugan unleashed their assault. Schmidt turned and ran for the hall, leaving his guards to handle the fight, and Steve sprang to his feet, snapping the cuffs around his wrists and snatching his wand from the hand of the guard who'd been holding it. He flung an elbow back behind him, along with a well-placed kick and a couple of spells, eliminating the guards who had been standing behind him.

"Steve!" Monty called, snatching up the shield that had rolled in his direction when the guard holding it fell. "You might need this!" He hurled the shield at Steve with one hand, tossing curse bombs with the other.

"Thanks!" Steve yelled, then turned for the door in pursuit of Schmidt.

He hurried down the corridor, and he heard a distant explosion and then Jim's voice yelling in the radio in his ear, "We're in! Assault teams, go!"

"Move out!" came Phillips' voice over another line.

Steve picked up the pace, knowing the battle was heating up behind him as all the S.S.R. soldiers who'd been waiting outside burst in. They had the Hydra guys, though. Steve's target was Schmidt, and he wasn't letting him get away.

He rounded a corner and ducked down behind his shield as Schmidt fired another burst of lightning at him. Looked as though he'd gotten himself a bigger gun. The corridor curved too sharply for Steve to get in a good shot with his wand, so he flung his shield into the wall, where it bounced and arced out of sight. Steve didn't hear the sound of it catching someone in the head, but he did hear a metal clanging that told him the shield had wedged itself between two doors that had been closing, and he hurried forward.

Another one of the guys with the flamethrowers appeared before Steve could get to his shield, and he ducked into a doorway to the side to get out of the heat. He tried shooting water out with his wand, but it just hissed and turned to steam as it hit the blaze. It made sense that they'd be shooting magical fire, but it had been worth a shot.

The flames got louder as the guard wielding them got closer, and Steve waited, thinking he could roll out under them when the guy got close enough and pop up and punch him in the face. They were extinguished abruptly in a burst of gunfire and an explosion, then he heard the heavy sound of a body dropping to the floor. Steve leaned out from his doorway to see Peggy rushing in, a group of guys from the 107th and 89th behind her. He smiled. "Nice shot," he said as she stepped forward, and she grinned. She opened her mouth to say something, then Steve grabbed her and dived back into his doorway as a reptilian shriek echoed down the hallway. He heard the 89th and 107th guys diving out of the way as a flash of scales and teeth and claws filled the corridor, followed by the snapping of fangs and the screaming of Hydra soldiers as the wyvern rounded the corner.

"I guess the charms work," Steve said, stepping back out into the hallway. No one on their side had been attacked by the wyvern, though they'd all had to scramble to get out of its way.

"Fortunately," Peggy said with a smile. She nodded in the direction Schmidt had gone. "Weren't you about to…"

"Right," Steve said, and darted off after Schmidt. The hallway was on fire and there were angry wyverns running around, but Peggy could take care of herself. Steve grabbed his shield out of the doors it was wedged between and put on a burst of speed as he headed for the hangar.

Once he got there, it was chaos. The air was glowing with blue lightning and spells, crackling with bullets and vibrating with the shrieks of at least three of the wyverns flying around in low circles and snapping at Hydra agents. Steve could see the Valkyrie, a massive hulk of metal turning slowly toward the opposite end of the hangar where a tiny pinpoint of light marked the end of the runway and the beginning of the open sky. Steve couldn't let him take off, but how could he cross the madness in front of him and get to the plane in time?

He spotted a familiar blur of red hair in the air above him and he ran forward, slamming his shield into a couple of Hydra helmets as he went. "Katie!" he yelled, and she and the wyvern veered in his direction.

Steve ran up a stack of boxes and leapt into the air, and he heard Katie yell, "Pancake! Catch!" The wyvern swooped lower, making a fist with one foot as Steve's hand reached out, allowing him to grab hold without tearing his hand to shreds on the talons. The wyvern continued its loop, circling back as it reached the edge of the melee and flinging its foot out to the side, giving Steve some extra momentum as he jumped. He landed clear of the fight and poured everything he had into his legs, running after the retreating airship.

As if Schmidt sensed what he was doing, the plane picked up speed. Steve ran faster, but he was no match for the machine, and it was pulling away. Despair that he'd been too late started to expand in his chest when a car screeched to a halt beside him and Phillips barked, "Get in!"

Steve leapt into the passenger seat without hesitating, wondering briefly where Phillips had found a car in the first place, then noticing the octopus emblem on the hood ornament. It must be Schmidt's. Phillips gunned the engine and they took off after the Valkyrie. Steve shot a quick glance back to the backseat where Peggy was sitting, determination burning in her eyes as the airship drew closer.

The Valkyrie started to pull away again, the dot of light at the end of the runway getting larger rapidly, and Phillips jabbed a button beside the steering wheel that sent the car rocketing forward as flames shot out the sides. They were gaining on it now, and Steve stood and slid out onto the side of the car, holding onto the door to keep his balance on the running boards. "Keep it steady!" he called to Phillips. If they could get level with the wheel, Steve could jump and catch the mechanism above it and pull himself up inside.

"Wait!" Peggy called, and Steve looked back as the car surged forward. She grabbed one of the harnesses across his chest and tugged him forward and kissed him, deep and fervent and passionate, and Steve couldn't do anything but gasp for air and stare at her stupidly when she let go. She'd never kissed him like that before. "Go get him!" she said fiercely.

He looked at Phillips, as if he was seeking confirmation for what had just happened, and Phillips rolled his eyes. "I'm not kissin' ya!" he declared.

That snapped Steve out of his haze, and he turned back to look at the Valkyrie, the wheel drawing ever closer, but still not quite in reach. He threw himself against the hood as one of the propellers slashed down at him, hearing the snap of glass behind him as it crunched through the windshield. He glanced back, and Peggy had ducked down out of the way. Phillips had barely flinched. Steve stood up again as the wheel drew closer. The road beneath them was rapidly running out. As they burst out into open air, Steve threw himself forward, hearing the tires of the car screech behind him. He caught on a cable and pulled himself up quickly onto the wheel and then grabbing the metal of the landing leg. A quick look behind him showed him the car safe and mostly still on the ledge, Peggy standing up to keep him in sight as he disappeared.

The edge of the mountain was out of sight before he could blink, and Steve had a moment to be impressed with the speed of the thing—he could already see the rapidly widening glitter of the ocean on the horizon—before pulling himself up a little higher and tucking himself into the spires of the landing leg as it started to fold up inside the plane. He climbed up, wriggling out as the bits of machinery started to flatten and the hatch beneath it closed. It was suddenly quiet, out of the roaring wind.

Steve jumped off of the mechanism and pulled himself up onto a thin catwalk and looked around. He was in the bottom of the plane, in what looked like the weapons bay. Bombs were nestled into little crevices all around the bottom of the plane, and as he stepped closer, he realized they weren't just bombs, but smaller planes. These must be the kamikaze planes they'd been using the naquadah for. Steve could feel the magic and destructive power humming off of them even here in the middle of the room. It looked like Schmidt was going to fly to the east coast, and then pilots would take the little plane/bombs and head off for specific cities—the names of the cities he was targeting were painted on the sides, and Steve swallowed down a knot of fury as his eyes caught one labelled 'New York'. Oh, hell, no.

The catwalk to his left rattled as boots landed on it, and several Hydra soldiers came running into the bay, tromping along the catwalk toward their assigned planes. Steve jumped up, grabbed onto a rail in the roof, and swung over, knocking the last soldier off the catwalk and down into the machinery. The rest of them spun around at the sound and moved toward Steve, the one in the front pulling out a knife and lunging at him. Steve dodged him, sent him to the ground with a punch, then took out the second one with a kick. He grabbed the knife out of the hand of the first one, who was getting back up again, and flung it at the third one, who was retreating for one of the planes, catching him square between the shoulders and dropping him like a rock.

The first one scrambled away and dove for the nearest plane, pulling back the hatch to get in. Steve lunged for the control panel in front of him and jabbed at the biggest button, opening the hatch below the plane and sending it tumbling out into space to explode harmlessly in the ocean below. The soldier who'd been trying to climb in flailed at the wall, caught it, lost his grip, then fell out after the plane.

More soldiers came at Steve before he could drop any more of the planes, and he fought with two of them while the third dove for the 'New York' plane. Steve threw off the soldiers and jumped forward, but the third one had already gotten into the plane. Steve raised his shield to bring it down and crack the canopy, but one of the soldiers jumped at him and caught him in the middle, knocking him to the side and making him drop his shield. He got back on top of the plane just as it dropped, and Steve, the soldier he was fighting, and the pilot dropped out into the air.

Steve clung to the outside of the canopy, his fight with the other soldier momentarily forgotten as they both fought to keep their grip. The pilot started to roll and spin the plane, trying to knock Steve off and evidently not caring if his comrade fell with him. He pulled the plane into a sharp upward turn, and Steve and the soldier both fell back. Steve managed to catch onto one of the fins behind the cockpit, but the other soldier did not, falling into the propeller and vanishing in a pained scream and a spray of gore. Steve grimaced.

The plane levelled out, and Steve could see the pilot inside craning his neck to see if he'd managed to knock him off. Steve inched forward, pulling out his wand and tapping the edge of the canopy to undo the lock. It sprang open and Steve reached inside, grabbing the eject lever and sending the pilot flying out of the ship. He hauled himself forward and down into the cockpit, waving his wand at the canopy to close it again. He was down lower than he should have been since the seat had flown out of the plane with the pilot, but Steve was tall, and he still had good visibility of the Valkyrie up ahead.

Steve wasn't sure on the specifics of how to drive the little plane, but the controls looked an awful lot like a steering wheel, so he pointed it in the direction of the Valkyrie and caught up. Bolts of blue lightning shot out at him from the gun turrets on top, and Steve figured Schmidt must have figured out that it wasn't one of his guys driving the plane. He aimed for the back of the plane and braced himself, hoping the little craft wasn't going to explode on impact as he crashed back into the weapons bay.

It was a bone-jarring landing, but no explosions were forthcoming, and Steve threw the hatch open and jumped out, scooping up his shield from where it had fallen earlier. He looked back at the plane he had crashed, the propellers in bits and the little craft no longer air-worthy. Well, that was New York's bomb taken care of, but he wasn't done yet. He glanced at the control panel, contemplating just dropping the rest of the planes out into the open ocean, but he didn't know how long it would be before more soldiers came at him. He'd taken out six, but there were way more than six planes down here. There might not be time, and Schmidt could still cause plenty of damage with those gun turrets and whatever other weapons were on board. No, his best bet was to make for the cockpit and stop the whole show.

Steve put up as many wards as he could think of quickly across the door to the weapons bay—at least that would slow down anyone who headed down there after he left—then hurried up toward the front of the plane, stopping to take out any more soldiers he came across. No matter how far he got from the weapons bay, he could still feel the naquadah humming in the air—it must be worked into the walls of the ship itself. The cockpit, when he reached it, was eerily quiet. There was no one in sight, but Steve didn't need a Revealing spell to tell him Schmidt wasn't far off. He'd known he was coming. He was just waiting for him now.

Carefully, Steve inched forward, shield raised. Schmidt was in here somewhere, but the closer Steve could get to the controls, the better. Soft, white light played through the cabin—they were up high enough they were above the clouds, and Steve could see the curve of the earth below them and the dark of space above them. No wonder they were moving so fast. If it hadn't been for the imminent danger of death and all, Steve might have taken a second to admire the view. It was kind of amazing.

He was more than halfway up, level with a bulk of machinery in the middle that was glowing blue and no doubt housed the Tesseract, when the familiar whine of an energy gun powering up behind him had him spinning around. The bolt of lightning flung him back and ricocheted off his shield to blast a hole in the front window, sending loud, freezing wind flying through the cabin.

"You don't give up, do you?" Schmidt asked, a manic smirk on his face.

"Nope!" Steve declared, lunging forward, shield still up, as more bolts of energy came flying his way. He made it to Schmidt and plowed into him, fists and shield flying. He landed some solid punches, but so did Schmidt, and a knee to Steve's gut sent him flying back again. Steve landed on his knees and stayed there long enough for Schmidt to come flying forward with a kick, then Steve grabbed his leg and hurled him around and into one of the support struts as he jumped back to his feet.

Schmidt was barely fazed by the impact and lunged forward again, and they exchanged several more ferocious punches and kicks, Schmidt hitting too hard and moving too fast for Steve to get his wand out. He managed to get an arm around Schmidt's neck, but Schmidt lunged to the side, yanking Steve with him and turning in the air so that Steve took the force of the collision as they landed on the casing around the Tesseract. Steve lost his grip on impact and Schmidt rolled away.

Steve grabbed up his shield by the straps and swung it at Schmidt's face. Schmidt grabbed at the other strap and tore it out of Steve's hand, spinning it around and bringing it in for a blow that would have shattered Steve's cheekbone if he hadn't ducked out of the way. He wrenched the shield out of Schmidt's grip and slammed it into his face, sending him staggering back into the control panel, slamming against the controls and sending the plane into a sharp dive amid a shower of sparks.

Steve flew up into the ceiling as the floor flew out from under him. Schmidt came flying after him, hitting him with a punch that sent him flying sideways into one of the support struts. Schmidt crawled down another support toward the control panel, kicking at it and hitting something that levelled the craft out again, sending Steve smashing into the floor. Schmidt flicked his wand at the panel, and Steve rolled behind one of the supports to catch his breath as Schmidt descended from the control platform.

"You could have the power of the gods!" Schmidt yelled, and Steve heard a soft whine of energy before a shot came flying in his general direction from Schmidt's pistol. "But you wear a flag on your chest and think you fight a battle of nations!" He fired again with both the gun and his wand, sending deadly bursts of energy at him so fast Steve could only leap out from behind his cover and dive for his shield. He pulled out his wand as he flew and shot a spell at Schmidt, pleased to hear him cry out angrily as it caught him in the ankle. "I have seen the future, Captain!" he cried triumphantly. "There are no flags! Only Hydra!"

"Not my future!" Steve yelled back. His wand out now, he was able to send several more spells in Schmidt's direction—the Stunning spell only dropped him to his knees, but Steve slashed out several times with the attack spell he'd learned from Peggy, and Schmidt hissed in pain as gashes appeared across his arms and chest.

Shoving himself back to his feet with a growl, Schmidt fired both a spell and a blast from his pistol at Steve, and Steve's reflexes were fast enough to keep him from getting hit by the energy bolt, but Schmidt's reflexes were fast enough to make sure the spell caught him in the gut, and that noise Steve heard might have been his own shriek of pain as the world went white around the edges for a minute. Vision returned just in time for him to roll out of the way of Schmidt's boot coming down toward his neck.

Steve slashed again with his wand as he rolled, catching Schmidt in the face this time, and the head of Hydra cried out and dashed a sleeve across his face to wipe away the blood dripping into his eyes. Taking advantage of his distraction, Steve sprang back up to his feet and hurled his shield at Schmidt with a yell. He caught him square in the chest and sent him flying back. Schmidt crashed into the housing of the Tesseract, and Steve's shield skidded off his chest and sliced through part of the mechanism. Blue lightning started to crackle all around it, sparking in the air and around the machine.

"What have you done?" Schmidt demanded, staggering to his feet and staring down at the machine in horror. At the top of it, the remains of a little metal containment box slanted off sadly to the side, and a blue cube, just a hair too big to fit comfortably in Steve's palm, lay to the side of it. It was glowing blue, the fire deep within it and the light something Steve had never seen, and he knew almost at once that that light belonged to another world. The Tesseract.

Schmidt reached out for it, picking it up, and Steve bit back the instinct to shout out a warning not to. It was beautiful, ethereal, otherworldly, and every cell in Steve's body was screaming that it was dangerous. The blue light shone brighter, turning white as Schmidt tightened his grip on it, highlighting the sharp lines of his face in stark light and shadow. Little tendrils of energy flickered and crackled in the air around him, increasing in brightness and intensity, and then with a flash, the ceiling of the airship and the sky above them seemed to rip in two and disappear, revealing a rich field of stars, nebulas and colored cosmic clouds swirling in the inky blackness of distant space above them.

Flashes of blue light continued to dance around them, more and more of them shooting out of the Tesseract and sparking through the air, dancing up and down the pillars. Steve stared in horrified amazement at the scene around them, while the look on Schmidt's face was nothing short of rapturous. He looked down at the Tesseract in his hand, his look of ecstasy suddenly warping into one of horrified pain. Steve's eyes went wide as the Tesseract continued to glow even brighter, white light shooting away into the sky and pieces of Schmidt's red skin flaking off and disappearing with it. Faster and faster the light enveloped him, and he was burning, screaming, and Steve threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the white-hot light pouring out of the little box, then there was an almighty flash, a bright beam of white light, and whatever remained of Schmidt was gone. The sky closed above him, and a rolling wave of energy that Steve could feel in his gut pulsed out from the cube. Then everything was quiet.

The bright light blinked off, leaving the Tesseract, glowing soft and blue again, to hover in the air for just a split second before dropping to the floor. The grating beneath it sizzled and melted away, as did the grating in the level below, and the flooring under that, and Steve stared down as the little box melted its way through the plane and fell out into the air. He could almost imagine it dropping with a soft _plop_ into the ocean, and wondered if it would settle in the sand when it hit the bottom or keep burning its way through the earth. In any case, it was gone, and good riddance to the thing.

Steve pulled off his helmet, allowing the cold air whipping through the cabin to wick the sweat from his hair, and staggered over to the chair in front of the controls, suddenly very aware of every blow his body had taken. Okay. Schmidt was gone. But the plane was still here. It was still going too. He didn't know what any of the controls did, but there were a couple of displays that Steve was able to figure out were coordinates. He knew this thing was fast, but it was moving even faster than he thought. He was almost in the States, and it looked like, whether because that's what Schmidt's original target had been all along or out of some sort of spite for Steve, the Valkyrie was on a collision course with New York City. Another display showed there were a lot of bombs left, but even if he'd managed to eject them all earlier, the explosives in the gun turrets and the naquadah laced into all the walls would make the Valkyrie leave a sizeable crater when it landed.

Okay, well, he could just turn around, right? Fly in a circle and drop the bombs into the ocean and call Howard up somehow to stop the thing. He yanked on the steering wheel, but the plane continued going forward. He pulled it out in the other direction. Same thing. One of the switches below the steering column bore the label 'Autopilot'. Okay, so maybe that's what Schmidt had hit when he levelled the plane out. Steve flicked it, then tried turning the plane again. No dice. His knowledge of mechanical spells was limited, and restricted to car and motorcycle repair, but he tried every one he knew in hopes of getting the autopilot to unlock without success. This thing was going to hit the east coast whether he wanted it to or not. Unless…

Curious, he angled the controls down. The plane went into a sharp dive, correcting itself as soon as he let go. So, the autopilot was locked somehow, whether through mechanical failure or something Schmidt had done to it, or maybe that final wave of energy from the Tesseract had done something to the plane, but either way, there was no turning this thing. A glance at the map showed him there wasn't time to get help either. Maybe Gabe or Howard could make sense of the controls, but by the time Steve could get them on the line and describe the machine to them, he'd be over land and the plane would be making a beeline for New York. A knot formed in his throat, and he sighed deeply before swallowing it down. Okay. Okay. There was just one choice here. He could stop the plane. Millions of people were going to die if he didn't. So, really, it was no choice at all.

Steve closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He had to let them know. He wasn't going to be coming home, but he could let them know Schmidt was gone, and they were safe. He hit the button for the radio.

"Come in, this is Captain Rogers, do you read me?" Steve said. He knew he was calling back to the Hydra base, but his team should have taken it by now.

"Steve!" came Jim's voice, and relief surged in Steve's chest. They'd won. "What—"

"Steve, is that you? Are you alright?" Peggy's voice cut in.

"Peggy!" Steve replied. Relief and sorrow coursed through him. If he had to go, he didn't want to do it without telling her goodbye, though he didn't want to hear what would happen after he said it. But first things first. "Schmidt's dead!"

"What about the plane?" she asked.

"Uh," Steve said, looking down the controls in his hands. "That's a little bit tougher to explain."

"Give me your coordinates, I'll find you a safe landing site," she said.

"There's not gonna be a safe landing," he said. He swallowed. "But I can try to force it down."

"I'll get Howard on the line, he'll know what to do," Peggy said.

"There's not enough time," Steve replied. "This thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York." He swallowed hard. "I've got to put her in the water."

"Please, don't do this," Peggy said, and Steve's heart clenched in his chest at the frightened, pleading tone in her voice. "We have time; we can work it out," she insisted.

"We don't have time," Steve said sadly, checking the map again. He was rapidly running out of ocean beneath him. "Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are going to die. I don't know what else to do," he said, his voice cracking slightly. "I'm sorry." He pulled his compass out of his pocket and flipped it open. Peggy's face smiled up at him from the inside of the case. He set it next to the steering column, took a deep breath, and tilted the controls down.

"Peggy?" he asked. She hadn't argued after he apologized, but Steve hoped she was still there. He was about to die, and he wasn't as scared as he thought he would be. But he didn't want to do it alone.

"I'm here," she said in a soft, sad voice.

"Peggy, I'm sorry," he said again. "This wasn't…" He swallowed down a lump in his throat. "This wasn't how it was supposed to be." He sniffed, dashing away the tears blurring his vision. "When this war was over, I was…" He sniffed again. "I was gonna marry you. We were gonna have a house and a nice life, and we were going to get old together, you and me."

The waver in Peggy's voice made the painful vice around Steve's heart clench even tighter. "I would have liked that," she said softly.

The sunlight disappeared as the Valkyrie hit the clouds. "I was even gonna learn how to dance," he said, dashing away the moisture in his eyes again. "I don't know how, but I always wanted to dance with you."

"I could show you how," she said, her voice cracking. "When this is over. Come back to me and I'll show you how to dance."

"I'll try," Steve whispered. A sob welled up in his throat as he realized he was never going to see her, never touch her again, and he choked it back down.

"Next Saturday at the Stork Club?" she suggested, her voice wavering as she tried to force hope into it. It didn't work, but Steve smiled. They could dream, couldn't they? And that…That would be a good dream. A beautiful hope to go out on.

"We'll have to start with something slow," he said. "I don't want to step on your feet."

"Something slow and easy," Peggy agreed. "I promise."

Sunlight pierced the cabin as the plane broke through the clouds, and there was the earth below him, the water and the icy coast coming up fast to meet him. The dream was about to end.

Steve opened his mouth to tell her he loved her one more time, couldn't get the words out over the lump of emotion that had formed in his throat. He swallowed it down. He had to say it, had to get the words out before he met the rapidly approaching ice.

"Peggy, I love you," he rasped.

"I love you t—"

* * *

.


	85. Oh, Captain, My Captain

.

* * *

"Steve?" Peggy asked as the radio started to crackle static.

No reply.

"Steve?" she asked again, her voice breaking.

Still nothing.

"Steve?" she whispered, knowing there would be no answer. The tears she'd been holding back finally welled up and spilled out down her cheeks, and she made no attempt to stop them. A sob surged up as everything inside her soul shattered, and she lowered her head into her arms, shoulders shaking.

Alone in the communications tower of a Hydra base, Peggy Carter wept as she never had before and never would again.

* * *

Steve drifted into semi-consciousness, floating between waves of agony and numbness. Darkness and ice surrounded him, the cold slowly muting the sharp edges of the pain. Something in him hazily pointed out that was probably bad, that his body was shutting down, dying. He didn't fight it though. Because that was good. He'd done it. He'd brought the Valkyrie down, and everyone was safe, and all this pain, it would be over soon. He'd get to see his ma again. He'd get to see Bucky.

It was getting colder, and in that brief moment where the cold had dulled the pain enough to let him move, but hadn't become so heavy that he couldn't, Steve slowly reached down into his pocket, frozen fingers fumbling until they closed around a little glass box. He squeezed it tightly, and a soft white light chased away the darkness in front of him. The ice and snow glowed blue in the light, filling the room around him and drifting in on top of him through the hole in the window. He laid the box beside him, unfolding the clumsy fingers of his other hand so he could see the compass clutched in his palm as his limbs went heavy and grew still. He looked at Peggy's face and smiled, watching her as the cold crept further into his body, until it finally dragged his eyelids shut.

Alone in the broken remains of a Hydra airship, the darkness called and Steve Rogers answered, visions of a girl with hazel eyes singing him to sleep.

* * *

The air around Jim hummed with giddy victory—Hydra was defeated and the world was safe. Grindelwald and Hitler were a mere technicality at this point. The world was safe, but at the cost of two of the best men Jim had ever known. He sat with what was left of the Howling Commandos at a table in the corner of the Hog's Head, removed from the jubilation around them.

"To the Captain and the Sergeant," Jim said, raising his glass.

"To the Captain and the Sergeant," the rest of them echoed.

Jim drained his glass and sat back in his chair, wishing the Firewhiskey would burn a little sharper and do something about the numb weight in his chest. Steve and Bucky were gone, and it made sense that they would go together, but what were the rest of them supposed to do now?

Alone in the corner of a bar, the crowds around them wondering why they were the only ones who didn't look happy, Jim Morita and the Howling Commandos mourned.

* * *

Becky was sitting on the front steps of the school waiting, and as soon as Peggy came over the rise in the hill alone, she knew. She wasn't sure how; she just knew.

"He's not coming back, is he?" Becky asked quietly.

Sorrow flooded Peggy's hazel eyes, and she shook her head. "No," she said softly.

Becky nodded. There was nothing else to say.

"He saved the world," Peggy offered, as if that was supposed to help.

Becky nodded again. That was good, she guessed, but she didn't really care. Because Steve was gone. Two days ago, she had two brothers, and now, she didn't have any. The world around her went blurry as tears pooled in her eyes, and she felt her knees giving out, though Peggy's arms caught her before she hit the ground. Peggy tucked Becky's head under her chin and pulled her in tight against her chest, and Becky shook with the sorrow surging through her body and cried, hot, salty, broken tears.

Alone in the world now, Becky Barnes cried into the arms of one of the only people who could understand what she had lost, weeping for the brothers she would never see again.

* * *

_The world is safe now, but at a steeper price than anyone wanted to pay. The war is over, and our story is drawing to a close as well. Come back Friday for the final wrap-up._


	86. With Hope

_Our story is winding down now, as is the war. Peggy packs up some things in the S.S.R. office and gets an unexpected gift.  
_

* * *

Peggy dropped the pile of folders in her arms into the box on the table with a sigh. The war was coming to an end. People were celebrating everywhere, and the S.S.R. was packing up and moving back Stateside. Phillips had offered her a position there, and as soon as she graduated, she was going to take it. She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning for a moment on the box in front of her. She had always planned on going to the States after school. Always planned on joining up with the S.S.R. in New York. She'd never thought she would be doing it without Steve.

She'd cried there in the Hydra base, after she heard Steve speak his last, and she'd cried for a long time. Phillips had been there, escorted Jim out as she and Steve started to say goodbye, and though some may have read it as callous when he'd left her there to cry alone, Peggy knew it was the only comfort he'd been able to offer, the freedom to weep without needing to keep up appearances.

She hadn't cried since then. Not where anyone could see her, anyway. In the lonely hours of the night, or masked under the flowing water of a shower, she would let herself cry, long and deep and sorrowful. She'd lost so much and she let herself feel it, but only where no one else could see. Because there were appearances to keep up. She'd always been tough, but now she'd have to be tougher, because she was in this on her own.

Phillips came over and handed her another file for the box, this one thick, straining the edges of its folder. She lifted the flap to see if maybe it could be split into two, and her breath caught in her throat at the face staring back up at her. This was Steve's file, and that was Steve's face, and they must have never gotten around to updating the picture, because it was Little Steve, the morning of the experiment, it looked like. She remembered taking that photo. Erskine had wanted a 'before' shot to go with his notes, and what with everything that had happened after the experiment, they'd never gotten around to taking the 'after' shot. Steve had stood there, looking a little uncomfortable, but doing his best to smile for the camera, and Peggy smiled down at the black and white image, ghosting a finger along the side of his face.

"We have a couple of copies of that," Phillips said, nodding at the photograph. "Don't need 'em all."

She gave him a grateful smile as she realized what he was giving her permission to do, and she slid the picture out before placing the folder in the box with the others. Almost seven years they'd been at school together, and she'd didn't actually have any pictures of Steve. She wondered if Phillips knew how much it meant, giving her that.

When they'd finished the day's packing, she made her way upstairs, heading for the dining hall. Rebecca was sitting on a bench by the door, something clutched in her hands, looking as though she was waiting. "Hi, Peggy," she said, getting to her feet.

"Hello, Rebecca," Peggy said, sliding an arm around the girl's shoulders. Rebecca had been like her shadow since Steve and Bucky had died, and Peggy remembered her following Steve around the castle this way back when Bucky and the others had been captured and she was frightened and worried. Rather than finding it annoying, Peggy thought it rather sweet, and was doing everything she could to make sure Rebecca didn't feel alone. The two of them had loved Steve and Bucky in different ways, but they both felt their loss like a knife to the chest, and were able to take comfort in one another. "How are you?"

"Alright," Rebecca said. She was still easily brought to tears, but she was starting to find her feet again. "Mama and Daddy left today." The Barneses had come for one funeral and arrived in time for two. They'd stayed on for nearly two weeks, and that had been good for Rebecca, though she'd insisted on staying here to finish out the term instead of going home with them to start the Easter break early. Peggy suspected she wasn't ready to go home to a quiet, empty house.

"They took all of Steve and Jay's stuff with them," Rebecca went on. The house elves had helped them gather all the boys' things, and they'd been packing them up to take home. "But, um, I kept this," she said, gesturing with the book in her hands. "I thought you might want it."

She held it out, and Peggy recognized it as one of Steve's sketchbooks. "Oh," she breathed, putting her hands on it, but not pulling it from Rebecca's grip. "No, I can't take this from you."

"It's okay," Rebecca said, pushing it a little more firmly into her hands and letting go. "He had a lot more at home and stuff, and we're keeping those, but I thought, well, it didn't seem fair for you not to get to keep anything." One of Peggy's hands went to the tree pendant hanging around her neck. She hadn't thought of taking anything away from his family, but it was true, there was very little in the way of physical things she had of Steve's.

"He loved you a lot," Rebecca insisted. "And he'd want you to have something." She nodded at the book. "There's some drawings in there I think you'd like. That's why I picked this one."

Peggy pulled the book against her chest and smiled at Rebecca. "Thank you," she said.

They went in and ate together, and it wasn't until she was alone in her room later that Peggy opened the book. She spent a long time flipping through the pages. A lot of it was portraits—each of the Howling Commandos were there, in different poses and expressions, and each sketch seemed to capture something about the spirit of the person in it. There was the smirk on Jim's face, something in his eyes that made Peggy wonder what the joke was he was about to tell. There was the roguish twinkle in Jacques' eye that meant he'd just pulled off something that was probably against the rules and had a great story to tell. Monty looked as though he'd paused for breath in the middle of one of his long-winded speeches about the differences between something like Kelpies and Water Horses, and Dugan had his hat pulled down over his eyes as though he were attempting to drown him out and go to sleep. Gabe was tinkering with a pile of machine parts, and Peggy felt like she could see the wheels in his head turning. There were several of Bucky, laughing, talking, boots up on the table during a briefing, or even just sleeping, and Peggy couldn't put into words what it was about them that just seemed so very…_Bucky_, other than to say she, well, she felt rather at home looking at them.

There were several drawings of her as well, down on the pitch coaching Becky's Quidditch team, sitting at her desk working, walking, reading, and a few of just her face, smiling. There was something…again, it was hard to say, but there was a softness, a tenderness to them—not a softness that made her seem weak or delicate, but one that just…she could just see, through the lines and the curves and the shadows, she could just see how much Steve loved her.

There were several other portraits as well. She saw Rebecca and Esther, Colin and Donovan, Dave and Morris, several people from Hufflepuff, Willow the house elf, and even one of Ethan that Steve must have drawn from memory—the date in the corner was after he died. There were several of smaller, unimportant things as well, like piles of shoes or light glinting on a doorknob, and there was one that appeared to be just a picture of Steve's foot—complete with a hole in the sock—that made her smile. They were little and ordinary things, but they were pieces of Steve's life, and that made them very important indeed.

In the back of the book were a couple of pages that made happy tears spring up into her eyes, and Peggy wondered if these pages were why Rebecca had chosen this book for her. These were studies Steve had done looking in a mirror, and his face looked back up at her from the pages, smiling, frowning, thinking, laughing. A lot of them were smudgy, with lines visible from multiple erasures, and Peggy remembered Steve telling her that he had a hard time drawing his own face because he never felt like he was getting it right. They all looked so very like him, though. A dark spot appeared on the page as she looked down at it, and she turned her head away so that she wouldn't drip any more tears onto the book, wiping hastily at her eyes.

She closed the book carefully and sat up a little straighter. Steve was gone, but she had this incredible gift, this little glimpse of the world through his eyes. It was a little piece of him she could carry with her, and, well, the way Steve saw the world wasn't such a bad way to look at things, was it? To look for the value in everyone, to look for the right thing to do…They could all stand to look at things like that. And if she could do that, she could keep his memory alive. He'd never really be gone, then, would he? She could keep him with her, draw on his strength and goodness and live the good life she knew he would want her to until she saw him again.

* * *

_And with that, we draw the curtains on Peggy. At least for now..._


	87. The Future

_Steve, as it turns out, is not quite as dead as he thought he was...  
_

* * *

Steve's senses came online slowly, and for a long time, he drifted, pleasantly drowsy. Eventually, awareness returned enough for him to hear sounds, someone talking, but distant, staticky. Maybe a radio? His eyelids fluttered open heavily, the colors above him coalescing into the clearer lines of a slowly moving ceiling fan. He felt his eyebrows furrow slightly as sounds became a little clearer—it was a radio, and a baseball game, but something…something was off about it.

He rolled his head a little to the side, taking in the room around him warily. Drab colors, small, not much in it but the bed he was in. Not the infirmary at school, which is where he would have expected to wake up. Wait a minute, why was he waking up at all? Hadn't he…He'd, he'd crashed the Valkyrie, he remembered ice and pain and…well, not much else, actually. Had he survived somehow? Or was this…Was he dead? Was this Heaven?

He sat up experimentally, testing his limbs. He didn't hurt like he'd gotten the snot beat out of him by an evil super-soldier and then crashed into a wall of ice, but everything definitely ached. So, maybe he wasn't dead, then. If it was Heaven, nothing should be hurting, and if it was Hell, well, he imagined it would hurt a lot more. So, he was alive. Okay. But where was he?

He sat the rest of the way up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. He was dressed, but in clothes he'd never seen before, and why was he wearing his shoes in bed? And why was he on the bed instead of in it? And what…That game on the radio was wrong, what was that? Wait, he knew this game! It was the Dodgers and the Phillies and…He'd been _at_ that game! The summer after his ma died, this was the game Mr. Barnes had bought tickets to! They'd watched the game and run into Gabe's family in the parking lot, and…Why was a game that was nearly four years old on the radio? What the hell was going on?!

Steve's head snapped around at the sound of the door opposite the bed opening, and though the woman who walked through was wearing what looked like a standard S.S.R. uniform, Steve didn't relax. The game was wrong, and as he looked at her…She was wrong too. Something about the way her tie hung—that was, that was a man's tie, and her shirt… Steve's eyes darted back up to her face quickly as he realized he could see the edge of her bra through her shirt—no, that was, that was, no, that was wrong too. Her hair too, her hair was down around her shoulders, not pinned up the way the girls on duty always wore it, and…No. Something was definitely wrong here.

"Good morning," she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. She glanced down at her watch, then back up again with a smile. "Or should I say 'afternoon'?"

"Where am I?" Steve asked.

"You're in a recovery room in New York City," she said, still smiling pleasantly, but she was a little bit too stiff. A knot twisted in Steve's stomach. She was lying.

Steve glanced over at the radio again, another play being called that he could see like he was back in the stands. She wanted him to think that he was home and safe, but the details were wrong. What was the charade for, unless…He'd clearly survived the crash, and this was clearly _not_ the S.S.R. he knew. Had…Had _Hydra_ somehow found him instead?

"Where am I really?" Steve demanded, looking back at her.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," she said, and oh, she knew. She could tell he'd figured it out and it worried her.

"The game," Steve said. "It's from 1941. I know because I was there." The smile dropped completely from her face, and was that fear in her eyes? Good. If she was Hydra, she'd _better_ be afraid of him. Steve pushed himself to his feet, stepping forward and drawing himself up to his full six-foot-two to tower over her. "So, I'm gonna ask you again," he said, slow and dangerous. "Where am I?"

"Captain Rogers," she began, as though she was trying to calm him down.

"Who are you?!" Steve demanded.

The door behind her opened, and two men in all-black with heavy guns stepped in behind her. Steve backed up, drawing in a quick breath. It _was_ Hydra. Their guns were at their sides, not trained on him yet, and he didn't give them the chance to get them up. No wand and no shield, but he still had his fists, and he lunged forward and took them down with two solid punches, flinging them back into the wall. To Steve's great surprise, instead of hitting the wall and sliding down to the floor, they sailed right through it, landing in a pile of plywood shards on a slick tile floor.

Steve jumped out the hole they'd created, pausing only momentarily in surprise at the room he landed in—large and empty, save for the plywood shell of the 'recovery room' he'd been in and a large screen projecting the image of apartments he'd seen out the window. No time to think about the oddly convoluted deception now, though—those two guards had evidently been the only ones, and he made for the door before more could show up.

"Captain Rogers, wait!" the woman called behind him, but Steve ran faster, shoving his way through the double doors. He found himself in a curving hallway, and it looked more like he was in an upscale bank than a Hydra base, what with the slick tile, floor-to-ceiling windows, and people in suits. "Code Thirteen!" came the woman's voice through speakers somewhere up in the ceiling. "Repeat, all agents, Code Thirteen!" and Steve shoved his mounting questions out of his mind and kept running.

Some of the people in suits started moving toward him, and Steve shoved them away as they approached, wishing he had his shield or his wand and hoping Hydra hadn't done anything to them. He kept running, shoving aside pursuers who had clearly not been expecting to chase down a fleeing super-soldier today, and he took that advantage and ran faster.

He burst through a set of glass doors—and what the hell kind of security was this, because he shouldn't have been able to get out so easily—and in a few steps found himself on the street and staggering and twisting awkwardly to avoid being run over by a taxi. A taxi? Wait, that was a New York Yellow Cab, although it sure was a weird make of a car. What the hell was going on here? There were still people behind him, though, so he kept running, keeping pace with the taxi and coming out a side lane into a busy street and…

What the actual hell was going on?! This was…He was in Times Square, but this was Times Square like he'd never seen it. There were lights, lights everywhere, bright and gaudy and flashing images and words and advertisements for things he had no idea what they were, and he was surrounded by sleek, unfamiliar cars, and the people milling around were wearing clothes like he'd never seen before. He slowed his run, both to try to figure out what he was seeing, and because several of those unfamiliar cars, sleek and black and flashing sirens, were pulling up to block the road in front of him. He spun around, looking for an escape behind him, but more cars pulled up there, blocking his way, men in suits spilling out from the cars to bar the spaces in between. Pedestrians started leaning in to look, curious murmurs running through the crowd. What was…Where was…What was happening?

"At ease, soldier," came a deep voice from behind him. Steve spun around to see a tall black man approaching between the cars. He was wearing a long, black leather coat, had a patch over his left eye, and had his hands down at his side in a stance that said he wasn't looking for a fight.

"Who are you?" Steve asked, eyeing him warily.

"Colonel Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.," the man replied. "You would have known us as the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

"Where am I?" Steve asked.

"Forty-sixth and Broadway," Fury replied. Okay, so this _was_ Times Square. "I'm sorry about that little show back there," Fury went on, nodding in the direction of the building Steve had escaped from. He sounded genuinely apologetic. "But we didn't know what your mental state might be," he continued, as if he was still waiting on an answer to that one. "So, we thought it best to break it to you slowly."

Steve still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't some Hydra ruse, but Fury did seem genuine, and the uncomfortable churning that had started in Steve's gut backed him up—this didn't feel like Hydra, but something was definitely wrong. "Break what?"

Fury sighed. "You've been asleep, Cap," he said. "For almost seventy years. Right now, it's the year 2012."

Seventy…seventy _years_? Steve was…he was in the future? He looked around the square, then back at Fury. "How…How am I alive?"

"Well," Fury said, looking apologetic again. "To be honest with you, we don't really know. My docs say it was suspended animation—could be Doctor Erskine's formula, the extreme cold…I don't know."

This could all still be some sort of elaborate hoax, but something in Fury's tone, his willingness to admit he didn't have answers, made it hard for Steve to disbelieve him. "What about the war?" he asked. "Did we win?" He'd taken down Schmidt, and, hopefully Hydra along with him, but Grindelwald and Hitler had still been out there.

"Hell, yes. Unconditional surrender," Fury said. "Grindelwald folded like a house of cards, and Hitler and his boys…" He snapped his fingers. "Taking down Hydra was a big part of that," he added, and though his expression didn't change, there was something that wasn't really but was almost a smile in his voice that kind of reminded Steve of Phillips. "But the world hasn't changed all that much," Fury went on. "There's still a lot of work to be done. A soldier's work. The world could still use a man like you, Captain." He held out a hand. "There's a place here for you."

Steve's mind was reeling. He was in the future. He was sixty-seven years in the future, and the war was over, and Fury wanted him to keep fighting, and…sixty-seven years. Sixty…That was such a long time. A lifetime. Everyone he knew…Their lives would have gone on, stretched on without him, maybe…maybe even ended. Was anyone he knew even still alive?

The squirming in his gut kicked up a notch, and he swallowed down a wave of nausea. Everyone was gone. All he'd wanted was to come home and quit fighting after the war, but now there was no home to come to. And Fury wanted him to jump into some new fight, and with nothing left, well, what else was there for him to do? But the thought of a new war settled a weight into the bottom of his soul. He didn't think he could do it again.

He looked at Fury, evaluating, and Fury didn't seem put off by the scrutiny. All Steve's senses, everything was telling him that this was real, that Fury _was_ telling the truth, but, on the off-chance that this was still some elaborate Hydra hoax…He narrowed his eyes. "How do I know I can trust you?"

Fury kept his hand extended toward Steve, but reached up with his other hand and clicked his fingers. A woman in a suit and heels rushed forward from one of the cars and held something out to Steve. His mouth fell open. His shield and his wand. He reached out and took them from her, his hands suddenly aching as if they were missing pieces, relief settling into his soul as he wrapped his hands around them. The weight of his shield hung just as he remembered it on his arm, and the maple and eagle feather wand fit into his hand, the soft hum of its magic still there inside, warm and familiar.

The woman reached into her pocket then, and handed him something else. Steve reached out to accept the battered metal disc, unsure of what it was until he thumbed it open. His compass. Peggy's picture was still there, though it was faded and warped around the edges, the damage of ice and time.

He looked back up at Fury who was waiting, hand still extended. He really could trust him. Hydra never would have given him his shield and his wand back, knowing he could have taken out everyone in the circle around him with them. Okay. Steve swallowed hard, slipped the compass into his pocket, then stepped forward and shook Fury's hand. He wasn't committing to whatever Fury's fight was, and the look in the other man's eye told him he knew that, but he was going to trust him. That much, he could do.

He stepped back, his face falling as he looked around again at a world that should have been familiar, but was now something alien and strange.

"You gonna be okay?" Fury asked.

Steve sighed. "Yeah." He had no idea how, but, well, what else was he going to be? Fury sounded like he cared, but Steve had known him for all of two minutes, he was hardly going to fall apart in front of the man. "Yeah, I just…" Everyone was gone. Everyone he knew, everyone he loved, his whole, entire world... He felt the weight of his compass in his pocket, and he swallowed down the rising surge of emotions in his throat.

"I had a date," he said sadly.

* * *

_Cue the Captain America theme song and roll the credits..._


	88. Epilogue

_Here's a little mid-credits scene/preview to go out on.  
_

* * *

Down in the basement of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. base, Steve was in the gym, pounding away on one of the punching bags. Almost a month now, he'd been here, stuck in the future, and—no, it wasn't the future anymore, was it? He drove a fist into the bag in front of him. It was the present. The freaking—another punch—_present_.

He was trying to pull his punches—the punching bags down here weren't nearly as sturdy as the one Howard had designed for him, and he felt a little bad that he kept ruining them. But the images, the memories, the frightened voice screaming _what the hell was he supposed to do now_, it was all coming too fast and too loud, and he kept pounding until the sound of a snapping chain and ripping canvas snapped him back into the present in time to see the punching bag go flying across the room, sand spraying out from the gash in the side.

"Trouble sleeping?" came a voice from behind him.

Steve turned and saw Fury walking toward him, hands folded behind his back.

"Are you here with a mission, Sir?" Steve asked. All their talks of Steve rejoining what had once been the S.S.R. had remained tentative, but Fury brought it up frequently.

"I am," Fury replied.

"Trying to get me back in the world?" Steve asked, unspooling the tape from his hands. He was done for the day now that he'd broken another bag, and maybe by making a bit of a show of packing up, Fury would take the hint and leave him alone. Fury had offered him missions before, and Steve figured he was—somewhat—doing it to try to help Steve find his feet again. Steve wasn't sure that jumping into some futuristic fight was the way to acclimate to a new century, and Fury always nodded and didn't press it when Steve said no.

"Trying to save it," Fury said, and something in his tone pulled Steve's eyes up from where they were focusing on his hands. Fury was staring at him seriously, but there was something, just a tiny little hint of desperation in his eye.

Oh.

This wasn't Fury coming up with things he thought would help Steve. This was new. This was different.

This was something big.

* * *

_And that's all she wrote! Wow, I can't believe this thing has finally come to an end. This has been such a fun journey, and I loved diving into this world and having all of you along for the ride with me. You guys are the best. Your interest and investment in this story has meant an awful lot to me. _

_I did really dive all the way into this world, so, while this may be the end of Captain Rogers and the Norseman's Cube, it's not the end of the story. I've already started on Captain Rogers and the Avenger's Initiative (title subject to change at author's discretion). I won't be posting any of it until it's all done, because I have to make sure I've got everything right, but it's on the way, and I'm already, like, a hundred or so pages in._

_In the meantime, A Little Problem will still be going up for a while, and it's pure fluff. I've also got some Steggy stuff in the works. Some lighter stuff to tide you over until the sequel arrives. Thanks again for everything, guys! See you soon!_


End file.
